The ways in which people can reimagine the beloved turntable seems boundless. We’ve seen bass guitar turntables, computer scratching visualizations, turntable-controlled vibrating chaise longues, and turntables embedded in tree trunks as art installations. Still, there’s more:
TurntablistPC is an ongoing art project coupling a vintage turntable with a vintage PC, creating a hybrid, record-playing server that can be controlled remotely by remote websites around the world. It’s the creation of artist Mogen Jacobsen, and it’s currently being exhibited as part of a show called Webscape at the Art Museum of West Sealand, Denmark. What? You’re not planning to pass through West Sealand this fall? The museum still wants your help: embed a piece of code, and visitors to your own website will trigger manipulations of the turntable based on geographic position.
TurntablistPC Project Page
The TurntablistPC spins again! [Networked Music Review, my new favorite source for artsy music tech!]
Thanks to our artist friend Michael Una for tipping us off. I’m not sure I’ll be building anything of this sort soon, but what I do like about it conceptually is that it returns playback devices — increasingly abstract and virtual in the age of the iPod — to the realm of mechanical instrument. I think we may see all sorts of strange, new, hybrid digital/mechanical instruments in the coming years.
Of course, if you can’t figure out how to turn a turntable into a hybrid server art installation, you can always just don your black vinyl jumpsuit and strap your turntable to your back. I think Numark’s idea here was to somehow promote their turntables, but to me, they may have stumbled onto a new, futuristic couture in which we wear heavy objects as fashion statements. And for whatever reason, I’m game! (People could, you know, come up to you … I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine sorta thing?)
Making_sound grabbed this shot and sent it to our Flickr group; thanks!
"scratch your back". lol
that's so corny that it's awesome!
Thumbs up on the turntable, thumbs what on earth is up with that on the fashion sense…
looks way cooler than an ipod with those tampon earplugs!
yech!
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Oh! I get it! She's wearing an Emma Peel era cat suit and claw fingernails because she's scratching! Kind of stretching the premise there.
[…] clipped from createdigitalmusic.com […]
That's only scratching the surface of what bizarre stretches marketing people can go to.
It occurs to me that strapping enormous, heavy pieces of sound and visual gear to my back would not necessarily be a *novelty*.
[…] Turntable Art: Turntables as Interactive Servers […]
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Brilliance for free; your parents must be a sewetheart and a certified genius.