Walt Whitman: Sound and Vision

From the moment I started cutting vinyl records 16 years ago, I've dreamt of drawing with sound. Inspired by Claud Mellan's 1649 masterpiece the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, in which he engraved Christ's face with a single spiral line, I set out generate computer code to translate images into sound that when cut recreates the image on vinyl.
 
This limited edition of twelve records marks the first release of the Claud Mellan Spiral Encoder. Each disc contains a continuous spiral groove that encodes a photographic image of Walt Whitman as sound. 
 
Rather than scanning the image line by line, the encoder follows a single path from the outer edge of the record toward the center. Along this path, variations in brightness are translated into modulation within a fixed harmonic structure. The result is both audible and visible: when played, the record produces a sustained tonal field; when viewed under light, the image reappears across the surface of the disc.
 
Whitman is an apt subject for this first edition. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he writes across time, addressing readers he will never meet. Vinyl is the only media we trust to last a century and beyond. Each record is individually cut. Small variations occur in the process of inscription, and no two are exactly identical. The edition is therefore both fixed and variable: twelve works sharing the same structure, each bearing its own trace.
 
The Mellan Spiral Encoder establishes a method for translating image into sound without breaking continuity. It proposes the record as a site where these forms remain linked—where an image can be heard, and a sound can be seen, depending on how it is approached.
 
This first edition serves as a point of departure.