Listening with Hands: The Instrumental Impulse and Invisible Transformation in Turntablism

Although the discourse of turntablism revolves around the transformation of sound reproduction devices into musical instruments, narratives of incidental misuses and serendipitous encounters such as Grand Wizzard Theodore’s discovery of the “scratch” or Christian Marclay’s record found on the street, reduce this transformation to singular points in history and fail to capture the gradual process embedded within an artistic pursuit. The compositions, performances, installations, and research presented in this thesis are created through an artistic negotiation with the “instrumental impulse” and an interconnected “instrumental setup” that in turn transforms generic devices into personal musical instruments. These works are contextualized within the innovative works of King Tubby, Grandmaster Flash, Michel Waisvisz, and reexamine both hip hop and experimental turntablism with a practice that explores and exploits tactile characteristics of the technology and media. “Listening with hands” re-envisions turntablism through the dualistic nature of interacting with the turntable – an act that is simultaneously both listening and playing.