New Project in Progress to Share: Records
Organizing Process and Thought
A record is a disc made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that contains inscribed spiral grooves from the outer to the inner form. The grooves contain imprints of recorded sound, and when the record rotates about the center, the needle of a record player passes through the groove to reproduce and project the sound. Vinyl records are also known as phonograph records, gramophone records, or simply records.
A record is a piece of evidence about the past, especially in writing or some other permanent form. This can include evidence of past achievements or actions of a person or organization; a person or thing's previous conduct or performance.
To record is to set down, produce, or convert writing or another permanent form for reproduction and later reference.
The word itself, record, is based on the Latin root, -cord, meaning “heart,” later deriving recordari, meaning “to remember” as in, to commit to the heart. From that the word developed with Old French, recorder and record, meaning “remembrance.”
Definitions based on Oxford Languages.
These are the dictionary findings on the history of record—the record of record, if you will.
It was the origin root meaning “heart” that drew me in most, however. Music reaches new audiences and touches hearts across history, with vinyl records making access to sound easier at mass. Moments recorded in the past coming to define new ones for generations and living on. The disc, with its winding grooves like fingerprints produced to hold the hands of listeners, proverbially of course, harkens to the imagery of blood cells and fingerprint impressions: extensions of the body and the heart. The needle of a record player, pulling music like bloodletting. For every individual, there is an identity contrived of interests, tastes, and experiences, but especially music. Playlists stacked with artists, genres, and titles reminiscent of the genome. Grooves to form a beat, musical chords— we come back again to -cord, the heart of it all.
I have found it difficult to articulate the thoughts I have been having on my newest project; repurposing old and damaged records to become a representation and reflection of identity and time. Through word maps and research, I have assembled somewhat of a network of these thoughts and findings, with word associations bringing much of the concept to light. I found that many of these connections return to sensations; taste, touch, smell, sound, and sight. The resurgence of the vinyl record in popular culture is a tangible reminder of the human experience being based in reality, trumping the access that technology provides. These interpretations of such sensations come together to form human experiences and memory; the record.
With this I am reminded of my grandmother’s final weeks in home hospice, under the care of myself, my mother, and The Beatles greatest hits after her nurse told us that “hearing is the last to go in the active stages of death.” I return to this thought every time “Blackbird” and “Hey, Jude” plays and I think about the final memories she may have replayed in her sleep.
Rather than forming vinyl records into vessels (as I have seen them repurposed for wrinkly bowls to hold keys and spare change, a useful purpose for a discarded part of life to keep living) I wanted to reflect on the significance of records, both vinyl and of personal histories. I am interested in how a reproduced copy of sound can leave impressions on identity and memory. Just as music has molded us into the people we are, orm at best helped defined the self through relativity, I sculpted a face form, based on my own likeness, out of polymer clay—a similiar poly-based material as vinyl records, and used it as an armature to warp and mold old records to its form.
I am still in the preliminary, experimental stages of this process. I gain a better understanding with each pass. The record sculptures, once heated and formed to the armature with pressure and metal tools to emboss around the features, pull away like a mask with the face pushing outward, upward, and from its flat, previous state. Naturally, a growth comes to mind when comparing a vinyl record with my morph pieces. The labels on the disc are practically irremovable but I deem them irrelevant. I have taken steps to paint them in black, and now toy with the notion of potentially using Black 4.0, an improved “Vanta Black” that reflects little to no light as a symbol of a void, and using mirror paint as a symbol for reflection. Rather than the label defining the record’s contents, I believe it to be secret to the self, and the record as an object itself is either a symbol of escape or a reflection of that. Resonance with music is a personal relationship, but even the resonance of sound within spaces and environments changes based on environment and atmosphere.
I am interested in using this project as an exploration of how we find, identify, and adopt parts of ourselves from creative media, and the impressions left through life that are tangible and intangible.
