Recently learned Rutherford Chang died last year. Some readers of this forum probably saw profiles on him in NYT, Dust & Grooves, BBC, or several others about his massive collection of The Beatles ‘White Album’ (over 3000 copies before he died) that he showcased in a gallery. Super interesting concept in that copies were catalogued by their barcode and ranged varyingly in their condition. He later superimposed images of some of the covers (above) and the recorded vinyl, which begins in sync and slowly unravels into noise.
Reminds me of Basinski’s ‘Disintegration Loops’ in a way. I’m wondering what other projects are out there that delve more into the conceptual side of art.
I love this. Rutherford was my wife’s long-ago ex. I was never lucky enough to meet him, but we went to a retrospective of his in Beijing last spring (which included a room-sized replica of his store in lower Manhattan where his We Buy White Albums project took shape) and it was amaaa-zing.
Besides Basinski, another project that comes to mind is the band Yacht? I feel like Claire and Jona (who are also friends of ours) are artists as much as they are “musicians.” But surely there are many others
Before The Clock, Christian Marclay did a lot of work that played with sound and sound sources.
A few years back I nearly picked up a copy of Record Without a Cover when I’d become briefly obsessed with it. It is - I think - a collage like the above video but the idea is that its coverless state means each copy picks up scratches that make each record unique.
Still obsessed with The Clock, less so this record.
I’d know (and forgotten) about Record Without A Cover, but was unfamiliar with any of his other work. Your video reminded me of another (contemporary) artist, Maria Chavez, whose book on record, turntable, and stylus manipulation I have on my shelf.
I suppose there must be dozens of performance-based artists manipulating records? Another recording that now comes to mind is Alvin Lucier:
When I was younger and really getting into this stuff I had wanted to make an ode to ee cummings’ Grasshopper by cutting deep groves into a recording of grasshoppers so the needle jumped around. This is why my parents were adamant against art school. A life that could have been…
I had forgotten about Ryoji Ikeda’s Transfinite! I used to pop in here a few times during the week, middle of the day, between classes I was taking around the corner at Hunter College. The video borders on seizure-inducing, but experiencing this in person was anything but that. If you’re able to watch long enough you’ll see people blissed and stretched out on the floor. It was a cool way to get creative juices flowing for projects I was working on. I’d say this is more visual than musical art, but the glitchy sounds set to binary projections played a huge role. Any others see this?
