The album contains the entire conversations in which thirty-seven conceptual artists each explained one of their artworks orally and discussed on the tele- phone with the director of the museum, Jan van der Marck, how to execute its creation for inclusion in the show. On the cover of the LP album, one can read that, under the supervision of the curator, David H.
These works were thereafter displayed in the exhibition space of the Chicago museum. The director explained that they might be understood as processes, situations or information systems initiated by language. It seems that the museum wanted to find a way to foster conceptual art, a movement that occurred in the s and s that consisted of questioning the physical existence of artwork and asserting that art lies in ideas, concepts and language rather than in the production of physical objects.
Hear it. You can have your own interpretation of the materials and it does something for your experience. Instead it is an object entitled Record but an object that can be played. Those who are not afraid of ruining their record player or rather the needle will hear something like a cross section of average disco music.
Average in this case also means decreased quality of sound reproduction β the hi-fi fetish choking on itself. The 45s were paired with titles suggestive of their audio content and pressed in colored vinyl visually related to the sounds and their titles. The physical presence and color of each record was important. A sound recording of a tornado was rendered in purple vinyl, for example, since he observed that purple was the color of tornadoes when photographed.
The sounds that emerged from his triple turntable were not reproduced products but altogether separate by-products; the principal is always absent. Duffy employs dated material to create always-new amplified sounds. The system is structured on cyclical reuse, yet in its incessant circulation there is a constant deferral of repeated performance. Duffy seeks the materiality of that allusion. Unknown Leisure. Spider and the Fly. Set Free. Slide the Touch. The sound they produce is that of the birds themselves: birdsong recorded on records.
