Joe Colley - Project for an LP (Edition ..., 2004)

A fun act of chance operations provides the fodder for both an installation and recording project by Sacramento-based Joe Colley. Beginning with two identical mini discs, populated with ten brief noise fragments, five extended blocks of sound, and five silences of varying length, Colley set the players to random and fed their signals into another recorder, with each player occupying its own stereo channel. This recording became the source for an installation, wherein three turntables equipped with a test press of the minidisc recordings were each situated amidst a pair of oscillating fans. The fans act on the turntables in two ways: they push the tone arm to and fro, resulting in an additional level of randomization of the material and more prominently in the scraping of the stylus across the LP surface; additionally, the tone arm amplifies the fan motors, resulting in an all-pervading hum. Two recordings of the installation were made, one by Eric La Casa as he wandered around the room, undoubtedly inflicting his own mode of hearing on the document, and another by Colley himself, sitting back and presumably basking in his decision-less freedom.

Project for an LP