Lathe-cut Records (as Time Travelling Device)

// Collaborative Sound Installationm, Recording booth + Workshops // w/ Owen Chapman // 2023 - Ongoing

This ongoing research-creation project explores the philosophy and practice of lathe-cut record making as a speculative technology for messaging the future. Co-led by jessie beier and Owen Chapman, the project engages participants in workshops, installations, and recording sessions that interrogate temporality, plastic futurity, and the materiality of sound.

Using our trusty Masco RK-5 portable “suitcase cutter” record lathe—and riffing on historical records sent to the cosmos—this project questions dominant (all-too-linear) forms of time, as well as the paradoxes of plastic media as both archival vessel and ecological dilemma. What does it mean to encode a message into a medium that might outlast its intended audience? What futures are inscribed, distorted, or rendered obsolete in the very act of sonic transmission? How does the lathe-cut process challenge the limits and ambitions of messaging the unknown?

Installations + Workshops

Through a series of workshops and residencies, Lathe-Cut Records (as Time Travelling Device) has invited participants to leave messages to the future, using sound as a speculative medium for thinking across time and space. Notable iterations of the project include:

A two-day residency with Edmonton Public Schools (March 2024), where high school students and teachers created lathe-cut records as speculative messages to their future selves, opening dialogues about the ephemeral and archival nature of sound.
Two events at the philoSOPHIA conference (March 2024), featuring a recording booth installation and an interactive workshop where participants recorded personal messages to the future, engaging with feminist and philosophical implications of the practice.
Graduate workshops at Concordia University (2023–2024), where students collaborated on sound-based experiments in collective creation, cutting their recordings directly to plastic.

Masco RK-5 Portable Lathe

A suitcase-sized record cutter that transforms sound into physical grooves, preserving messages in plastic for future listening.

Sonic Futures in the Making

A student from the BAM/EPSB Research-Creation Residency deep in the brainstorming process, mapping ideas for their lathe-cut record project.

Cutting Sound in Real Time

Owen Chapman demonstrates the Masco RK-5 lathe, showing how sound is etched into plastic, one groove at a time.

Listening Through the Wires

A student from the BAM/EPSB Research-Creation Residency experiments with a classic cup-and-string apparatus to test out the fundamentals of sound travel and transmission.

From Cut to Playback

Close up of turntable where we bring recorded messages to life in the space where they were created.

Sonic Dialogues

Participants at the philoSOPHIA conference engage in our lathe-cut sound installation, recording personal messages to reflect on the philosophical and feminist implications of messaging the future.

Hands-On with the Masco

Graduate students at Concordia University collaborate with Owen Chapman, learning the intricacies of the Masco RK-5 lathe and the art of cutting sound into plastic.

Hands on with the Masco

Graduate students at Concordia University collaborate with Owen Chapman, learning the intricacies of the Masco RK-5 lathe and the art of cutting sound into plastic.

Inside the Machine

A student closely examines the inner workings of the Masco RK-5 lathe to investigate the mechanics behind cutting sound into physical grooves.

First Listen

Owen Chapman plays back a freshly lathe-cut record, bringing the recorded sound to life for the first time.