My cover art project had left me with a pile of vinyl records in my flat, which I had done nothing with. They looked lost and forlorn, almost naked. I began to think about what they represented. The whole experience opened my eyes to what buying and listening to music used to be like before streaming services, apps, and algorithms. It seems a much more complete experience. Walking into a record store, the excitement of a long-anticipated release, finding it or getting lured into browsing through the racks of albums. Chatting with your mates or enthusiastic staff for recommendations or serendipitously finding new artists, being undecided and then finally settling on a record, not knowing whether you’ll love or hate it but willing to take the risk, for the thrill of it. Rushing home to put it on the turntable and then lying down on the floor and listening to the sounds as the needle strikes the first track. Being enveloped and totally absorbed in the sound and the lyrics, following the songs to their journey’s end. Then doing it all over again, and again.
On starting this course I realised that these were the objects I needed to deconstruct and transform. To find new meaning from them or articulate something about them and the world we now live in, and what we have allowed to happen to the experience of music intentionally or unintentionally.
I started first by doing some sketches of records, some in charcoal, others simpler line drawings to see if this made sense, if it came alive to me on paper. At the same time I did some brainstorming and mind mapped ideas, my understanding of the object, its purpose, history, intentions and its impact.
This led me to think about ways of deconstructing the records. I smashed one with a hammer to see what it would look like and where it would lead me to. The effect was really interesting, and I played with it. It generated new ideas about how the art of listening to music has been broken and reconfigured in a new way through streaming, for better or worse. I am now exploring different techniques of breaking the vinyl and reconstructing it to capture what this new world is like and what has been lost.
