Karl Salzmann – To Start from Scratch
The project is currently divided into three sub-areas: while at the beginning of the project the focus was on researching and re-evaluating historical facts about modifications and performance practices with the gramophone (including Hindemith, Toch, Moholy-Nagy), over time the focus shifted to observing contemporary artistic practice with the medium of the record player. Through a variety of experimental settings, both installative and performative in nature, I have been able to carry out autoethnographic research as well as phenomenological investigations into the practice of other artists working with the turntable. Another area of the research, which is also an essential component of all the previous sub-areas, is the materiality of sound. Here, the materials of the recording media (including PVC and shellac) are at the focus of a critical examination of their economic and ecological aspects.
The materiality as well as the apparatus and the artistic practices are always considered and examined as relational in the project. I use strategies such as participant observation, autobiographical narration and dense description. In order to convey the content – especially that of materiality in the sense of auditory information, the reflection and documentation of the project is conceived in the form of audio-papers, sculptural and audio-visual objects, among other things.
Supervisors: Hans Schabus, Thomas Grill, Annegret Huber, Alexander Damianisch