Sound Writing
10" lathe-cut vinyl record w/ various ephemera
edition of 60
(2004)

This collection includes a clear 10" lathe-cut record containing recordings by artists Fred Lonberg-Holm, Helen Mirra/Ernst Karel, Carol Genetti, and Woody Sullender. Within the box are various ephemera including carbon paper liner notes, a dated newspaper clipping, a loose charcoal drawing, and other temporal or fragile items.

As the lathe-cut record is fragile, the vinyl groove is slightly damaged with each pass of the stylus.

Like the banjo project, I was interested in how memory and nostalgia frame aesthetic experience. The lathe-cut vinyl became an ideal vehicle, as the object transforms over time with the content eventually disappearing into the realm of memory. I was also considering the structuralist films of Tony Conrad and Stan Brakhage as well as Christian Marclay's "Record Without a Cover", where the experience of audio or visual content brings us back to the physicality of the media object. The object is not simply a vessel but becomes a site of the aesthetic experience.

Artists were asked to contribute a work specifically exploring this medium of erasure. Because of the nature of the project, no significant digital documentation exists.