Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

I loved Lyota Yagi’s piece. He made molds of records and used them to make records out of ice, which he would then play on a real record player. One could actually hear the music as the ice record played. Over time, the record would start to melt, and the music would become decreasingly articulate. As a conceptual piece, it is brilliant. It uses one mode of temporality to describe the other, and visa versa. We are forced to become aware of ephemeral music is because its physical object disappears over time. Eventually, there becomes no trace of the record or the music.

I’ve seen this piece at a gallery back home, and that time I read the work more tragically. At that time, I thought of the act of playing the record as more of an exchange, rather than a simultaneous realization of music and form. One must necessarily destroy the record in order to play it. It is impossible to evoke both the aural beauty and maintain the stability of the work’s form at the same time. The piece becomes one of choice: one must sacrifice either the experience of the music, or the physical object.

See the Nasher blog post on the same object.

Serena Qiu

Dario Robleto’s work makes him a clear inclusion in The Record. Beyond his innovative work with the record as a physical material, Robleto practice reflects a deep interest in the practices of the musician. Moreover, he considers himself not an artist in totality but some sort of hybrid figure: something like a DJ/researcher/creator/scientist/artist. His work involves a careful precision in preparation and selection of materials (hence the old country music, e.g. Patsy Cline). I find  There’s An Old Flame Burning In Your Heart, Or, Why Honky Tonk Love Is The Saddest Kind Of Love especially noteworthy in the way he allows the research to become a social pursuit. Growing up the son of a Texas honkytonk owner, Robleto has noted that a particular kind of melancholy persists in these establishments. His creation of these matches intervenes in the interactions of melancholy in these Texas honkytonks by rearticulating the musical score to these scenes, watching in strike up and blow out, injecting this melancholic music into the air. As much as the creation of these matches is manufactured, their true research function comes in the (un)artistic social use of the objects. Through actual use, they not only reflect the atmosphere Robleto was inspired by but they become part of that atmosphere, assuming markings (quite literally on the side of the box) and new meaning through actual use. The artist opens his work to a social element, allowing his work to assume not just the meaning he has put into it but the meaning it takes on its new setting, in some ways outside of his control. In this sense, we see art assuming a social character and the artist opening his work up to becoming (re)marked by the viewer.