Influences
I’d like to mention a few influential artists and ideas that have inspired my work for this project as I feel influences are an important key to understand the piece perhaps.
First up is Christian Marclay who is a huge influence to this project, and I would go as far as saying he’s the biggest influence to the piece. His piece Record Without a Cover is the main work that Vinyl Drag gives a nod to. Marclay’s Record Without a Cover is a vinyl record with the instructions; “Do not store in a protective package” embossed directly onto the disc itself. With this simple idea the piece that Marclay originally had pressed onto the disc changes in a way to reflect the degradation that would happen to a record left out of it’s cover after the dust and all manner of household accidents happen to it.
I then started to think about how easy it is to create a new piece of art through the mistreatment of another medium and this, coupled with the knowledge of Marclay’s Record Without a Cover sparked the whole idea.
There were other influential factors that had their play in the conception of this idea of degredation and objects and mediums working in ways they’re not meant to. Turntablism is a fine example of this and has been an interest of mine for a long time. Turntablism is a way of creating something new by using something else. DJs and scratch artist’s using found materials, recordings and music to create new soundscapes and “worlds” is something I’m very keen on, in particular the stories that Canadian turntablist Kid Koala creates from the records he finds in thrift stores. Pulled from his website:
kid koala lives in Montreal. his weapons of choice are… pencils, paper, clay, glue, mosquitoes, records and mixers… all of which he slyly uses to bring joy and silliness to the far reaches of the earth. [emphasis mine]
The idea of using an analog medium such as vinyl in a way that was not originally intended is what fascinates me the most and is a large contributing factor to the progression of Vinyl Drag.
