I realised that a lot of the process within this final major portfolio work is to question your own practice, for me right now it’s why sampling, and more recently, why the turntable? Why do I like records and sampling through the turntable? What does this represent for me? So I’ll do some research into an artist or two about it.
Christian Marclay was the first one that appeared, it seemed as if he was coined with inventing to use the gramophone and the turntable as an instrument for his works, coming up around the same time as the hip hop movement in the late 1970s.
I read this interview with Christian Marclay he describes his work and other aspects. Firstly this interview is by Vincent Katz, The parts that are interesting are the second page, they discuss where he has been influenced, is Fluxus part of the influence? He says the music isn’t but that there is no such thing as Fluxus music, but Fluxus as an idea, that conventional music, the presentation of music, people on a stage and everyone else watching. I want to look into Fluxus. Further on the third page here, it describes that there is a similarity between hip and rap music, at least on the surface with his practice. He says that “I think the desire to quote and make reference to the past is a very contemporary attitude. I don’t know why people feel like that. Everybody grew up listening to all this stuff, and all this music is, in a way, already sampled in our heads, it’s there. It’s a way that the musician triggers those memory bits that play with memory.
How can this be a memory for someone like me, who is sampling things I’ve never heard before? Quoting the past? Situating ones self into the piece of work? Fluxus?
I watched this video where he discusses what he is interested in, sounds like people we don’t want. We don’t want to hear the pops the clicks and the surface noise when listening to a record. Christian Marclay, he is interested in this practice and those are the sounds he wants to use. The sounds he can get out of the record are what he is interested in, and what can he get from it, he would cut the records into three pieces and then combine them into one. He described the punk rock as a huge influence on him, it allowed him to play music without studying music, and without having an instrument he began using his turntable as an instrument. He was doing this before hip-hop.
Christian Marclay Records
This project was made by Christian throughout the 1980s, he ended up creating an album built up of hundreds of hours of random recordings, using different turntables and affecting the vinyl record in different ways. He used the records as instruments and the turntables as the players, he would cut them up, melt them and manipulate them in numerous ways, the outcome was something similar to the Fluxus idea of process over outcome, that creating is the best thing to do. I will say the creative use and looped-up sections interest me heavily. It’s a similar but different thing than what I’ve been composing but the actual work is fascinating.
Specifically, the track 1930 captures my attention wholeheartedly, It’s a transfusion of pieces all held together, the trumpet being affected, the record being scratched, and the in and out keys coming through. Painting the record with an idea of random expression. I really like it.
Also just to note, I read he makes graphic scores specifically one called Ephemera, I want to check out graphic scores for myself as I want to paint one.