Tattoo Parlour

Tattoo Parlour is an improvised performance centred around developing instrument, The Performance Record Lathe. Using a blank disc and a handheld transducer (a 'cutterhead'), sound is 'tattooed' on to the record surface, while multiple tonearms track the evolving grooves. Unlike in traditional 'record cutting', which generally lacks agency, the performer can modify anywhere on the disc as well as adjust angle and pressure during inscription. As a result, it is possible to create commercial record-like grooves or undertake more experimental practice such as cross-groove inscription, or overcutting, eliciting sonic characteristic and/or tonearm behaviour change. The cutterhead is fed by audio from looped sections of Maholy-Nagy's 1933 optical sound film Tönendes ABC and the signals from the pickups are subjected to further processing and effects during performance. As in turntablism and sound art practices, the limitations of phonographic disc as recording medium are celebrated: the repetition of locked grooves are employed to build performance and clicks, pops and other artefacts of process are incorporated into the overall aesthetic. By using a handheld inscription approach, human 'inaccuracy' in a medium dependant on microvariation manifests as medium liveness and thereby enables the record and interface to act as performance partner.