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—CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: Testing, one, two, one, two. Can you hear me?

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—MAN: Yes.

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—MARCLAY: I'm soft-spoken. But it-- it [br]feels like it really bounces around,

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so I hope you're happy with this sound.

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I was experimenting with records, [br]melting them in my kitchen in the stove.

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And uh, the fumes, I think, got to me.

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That night, I went to sleep and I had [br]this dream that I ate a record because

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I felt so nauseated. I thought, "Well, [br]maybe I could make a little video."

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I enjoyed music as a physical experience. I used [br]to love going to clubs and hearing music very loud

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that just would, you know, take over your body.

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Now, I regret it because I'm like half-deaf.

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But, um, I think there was something [br]fascinating about sound being objectified.

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My influences for DJing really came [br]more from Musique concrète or John Cage.

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So I was always interested [br]in the conceptual side of things.

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In the 80s, I started a band called [br]The Bachelors Even. It was a duo and my

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collaborator was a guitar player, Kurt Henry.

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That's when I started using records.

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I would record these skipping records and use cassettes [br]onstage as these background rhythmic loops.

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We had a lot of destructive actions, actually, breaking [br]things for the sound, uh, that it would make.

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A very liberating moment was punk rock. You know, [br]here were people performing without any training.

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The combination of punk rock and performance [br]art really allowed me to get involved in music.

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Everybody I was hanging out with were either [br]dancers, musicians, painters, sculptors,

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performance artists in the East Village, just [br]being creative and collaborating very often.

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I came to London with my wife. [br]We needed a change from New York.

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Over the years, I've done many different things. [br]When I was a kid, I would always be collaging.

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I'm still the same person, cutting and pasting.

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My work is quite eclectic. If I'm [br]doing something new, I'm excited,

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and I might work with a printer one day or with [br]film fragments that I collage or graphic scores.

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I think it's important to make discovery through [br]the knowledge of other people. That's what I've

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enjoyed about music all my life is it is a [br]collaborative effort. So the thread of my work

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maybe is sound. But sound is such a wide subject, [br]so it allows me to work in many different media.

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Video, because it includes sound and image, [br]is a good medium for me. Now, it's, of course,

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very easy. You can film a video on your iPhone [br]and edit it on the phone and just send it around.

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You hang this one and I'll hang this one?

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I see, yea.

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Otherwise they, ah the mobile goes...

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The Snapchat project came about as a surprise.

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For me, it was a chance to work [br]with contemporary technology.

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I'm like really a low-tech person. I'm [br]not-- not very good with computers.

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Because I don't use social media, I didn't know [br]what Snapchat was. So, I did a little research

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and realized that three-and-a-half billion Snaps [br]are created every day and that just blew my mind.

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I wanted to shift the focus so it wouldn't be on [br]the image but on the sound.

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It seems more active today.

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It's talking a lot to us today.

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What I like is when they all go on together.

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Yeah.

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So that we really get this chorus effect.

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Yeah.

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Right now the library is just one Snap for each frequency, right?

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We're going to have a thousand Snaps with each frequency

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and it's going to make it feel a lot better.

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The Snapchat engineers were amazing.

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They developed these algorithms [br]allowing me to find what I was looking for.

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People are going to have such a blast with this!

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—I think so, yeah.

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I ended up making five [br]different sound installations,

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most of them interactive, from [br]Snapchats that were publicly posted.

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The one that I spent the most time [br]working on was called "All Together."

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As I would maybe make some 10 turntables, here,

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I had 10 iPhones and I created [br]a four-minute mix of Snapchats.

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For me, what was interesting is that [br]this is a new form of communication.

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People are creating their own language using [br]image and sound, which for me, of course,

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is interesting because it is about image. And [br]I've always been very interested in images,

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even though sound is so important to my work.

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Over the years, I've collaborated with many [br]musicians and always felt intimidated by

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their incredible knowledge and years of [br]practice. But they were very encouraging

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in the sense that they thought that my [br]way of doing things was interesting.

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I can't read or write music traditionally, [br]uh, so I had to invent my own ways.

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The more recent performance I've [br]done is called "Investigations."

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It's a series of found photographs [br]which were cropped, and they show

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the hands of different pianists. I wanted to [br]provide this to people who can read music.

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The posture on the image has to be emulated. [br]So it's this overlap of different actions.

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I like to use the potential [br]of images to create music.

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I love onomatopoeias because they're words, [br]but at the same time, they're image. You can't

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really separate the word from the image. [br]It's a very expressive way to draw a word.

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A graphic score is really an open musical score.

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My graphic scores can be fragments [br]from comic books or photographs.

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I like the idea that an image can suggest [br]sound rather than a note on a staff line.

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The choice of the performer is really important. [br]It's almost like selecting an instrument.

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In order to work on that Manga scroll,

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I bought a lot of Manga translated [br]into English and I cut them up.

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—I think it's okay, yeah.

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—I mean, I can put more if you'd like it more [br]transparent. But I think you can see it anyway.

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—No, I think it's gonna work.

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—All right, cool.

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I never thought I would get interested in prints, [br]uh, and I've worked in different studios now.

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I used to work at Graphicstudio in Tampa. And then,

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when I moved to London, [br]the commute was a bit long.

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I became aware of Manga comic [br]books traveling in Japan and

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seeing everybody in the subway reading this [br]stuff. You know, it's such a popular thing.

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The woodgrain has an expressionist [br]quality. I thought this would be

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appropriate because the collage is made [br]out of fragments and is cut out and glued.

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They're reminiscent of Edvard Munch's [br]"Scream," which has these concentric

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lines that feel like the sound is [br]really coming out of the mouth.

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The exhibition at Paula Cooper was [br]very much about this anxiety mood

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that we're living in right now politically.

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If you overlap 48 war movies on top of each other,

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you end up with a cacophony and you can't quite [br]follow the narrative. It's not a pleasant video.

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The sound becomes quite aggressive. [br]It's just a loop and it goes on

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forever. And this tunnel vision, for [br]me, the video, is just a different

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way to express the kind of frustration [br]that we're all experiencing right now.

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I want to comment on the everyday life that [br]we're all living and the things that surround us.

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When I first came to London, every [br]day was a visual feast just because

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I was looking at things differently. [br]On my walk from the studio to home,

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I take a lot of pictures, though I don't know [br]these days if my camera is better than my iPhone.

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Recently, I've made animations with [br]some of these photographs of trash

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that I would find on the street.

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We showed the one with chewing gum in Times Square.

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For me, it's just a form of note-taking.

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It was nice to bring back to the street [br]what I had found on sidewalks in London.

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I wanna just be a dilettante for the [br]rest of my life. Just be able to change.

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The street can be a place of creativity [br]and the street can be the studio as well.

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The power of visual culture and of sound works [br]on us in a very subliminal way. But it's there.

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You never know when some idea's gonna [br]hit you. It can happen anywhere.