Quotidian Record
Brian House (US)
Musical record from location data, 2012
Quotidian Record is a limited edition vinyl recording that features a continuous year of my location tracking data. Each place I visited, from home to work, from a friend's apartment to a foreign city, is mapped to a harmonic relationship. One day is one rotation, and 365 days is roughly eleven minutes.
As the record turns, the markings on the surface indicate both the time as it rotates through every 24 hours and the names of the cities to which I travel. The sound suggests that our habitual patterns have inherent musical qualities and that daily rhythms might form an emergent portrait of an individual.
As physical vinyl, Quotidian Record may be collected and fetishised, connecting the value of data today with the history of popular music culture. It provides an expressive, embodied, and even nostalgic alternative to the narratives of classification and control typical of state and corporate data infrastructure.
About Brian
Brian House is a media artist whose work traverses alternative geographies, experimental music, and a critical data practice. By constructing embodied, participatory systems, he seeks to negotiate between algorithms and the rhythms of everyday life. His work has been shown by MoMA in New York, MOCA in Los Angeles, Ars Electronica, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Eyebeam, Rhizome, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Conflux Festival, ISEA, NIME, and Issue Project Room, among others, and has been featured in publications including WIRED, TIME, The New York Times, SPIN, Metropolis, and on Univision Sports. He is currently a doctoral student at Brown University in the Music and the Modern Culture and Media departments.
This project was supported by a residency at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center.