“Circular Ruins”

Sound Installation - 5.1 surround sound
8'33", 2018 / Moss Arts Center / Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA

The runout groove of a record is where the spiral cut that contains the album’s music meets the circular inner groove. The needle travels endlessly in this space until the record is stopped or the needle is lifted off the surface of the record. “Circular Ruins” examines the repetition and variation in these moments after the music on a vinyl record ends. Through amplification, filtering and physical manipulation of six identical LPs a landscape of textures starts to emerge.

“The Circular Ruins” originally was an album released in 1998 by the Olympia, Washington band Nova Scotia (Marcus Fischer, Alex Neerman and Jason Powers). The album was named after a Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name in which a wounded man dreams night after night in the ruins of a circular temple. A box of unsold copies of the vinyl records found its way back to Fischer twelve years later where they remained in storage. This year—the 20th anniversary of the album’s release—presented itself as being a fitting time to revisit this release and shift the focus past the music that the LP contains.

“Circular Ruins” was presented as part of the group show, “SoundScapes” curated by Stephen Vitiello and included works by Olivia Block, Maria Chavez, Marcus Fischer, Robin Rimbaud (AKA Scanner), and Jana Winderen.
“SoundScapes” ran from May 17-June 9, 2018 at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, Virginia.