Audio Playback: Q & A with Veronica Szalus
Veronica Szalus lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area where she creates installation art. In 2011, Veronica received a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and has shown her work at several galleries including The Mansion at Strathmore in North Bethesda, MD and the Cade Art Gallery in Anne Arundel, MD. She is also a member of Studio Gallery in Washington, DC. She is employed at the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association as the Executive Director.
The use of cassette tapes shows an emphasis placed on the past. How did nostalgia play a role in creating this installation?
Nostalgia had very little to do with the concept of creating an installation using cassette tapes other than being an object from the past that could easily manipulated. My work focuses on transition and the cassette tape is an ideal object to capture that phenomenon. I find cassettes interesting because of their orderly shape and size and the ability to alter that appearance by pulling the encased tape from its protective shell rendering it useless as an audio medium in its original form.
There was unavoidable nostalgia slip during the process of collecting and assembling tapes for Audio Playback. For the tapes affixed to the floor, I wanted to highlight the broad range of content cassettes contained, including but not limited to volumes of music, books and magazines on tape, exercise tapes, interview recordings, classroom learning, and much more—basically anything audio. While going through the tapes I was reminded of how much this content captures the culture of the 80s and also note that much of this content is still in use today, compressed into mp3 files.
How do transitions and transformations inspire you in artistic creation?
I have a deep interest in creating environmental pieces that explore both the conceptual and physical phenomenon of transition. I am fascinated by the fact that everything, at all times, is in a state of evolution. From the macro to the micro, nothing is permanent and this defines our existence. I am continuously seeking to explore this through volume and scale, new forms, and observation of the intersection of natural and manufactured materials. Through the use of these materials, I embrace fragility, balance, and porosity while observing subtle and overt shifts caused by the impact of time.
How does the auditory aspect of the installation prove to increase the impact in your opinion?
The thing I like about the auditory aspect of the installation is the incorporation of another media that is wholly linked to the materials in the installation. The original plan for using audio was to provide an interactive component inviting the viewer to select and play a series of cassettes, finding that some tapes work and others have been physically impacted and no longer function. However as this particular installation developed, a quiet serenity emerged coupled with active lines of movement with light, so I took a step back, and utilizing the advice of Cory Oberndorfer, I switched to capturing the sound of the functioning technology itself rather than playing the content. I think this helps frame the impact of visual elements while leaving sound open to interpretation and takes the viewer back to the beginning and now mostly obsolete mechanics of cassette technology.
How would you describe the relationship we have with obsolete objects such as these in the modern day?
The cassette tape is obsolete, yet the content is not. I think you can make that comparison with many objects. We still hear sound with our ears, we still use our voice to produce sound and we still use devices to play audio. Today the amount of content that can be transported is significantly higher on handheld devices and audio technology is more versatile and reliable.
But don’t cast cassette tapes completely into the obsolete objects category yet, they are still used for recording interviews and books/magazines on tape and there is a cassette revival going on with startup garage bands and independent labels, and there has also been an uptick with major labels following the trend.
What about the cassette tape specifically drove you to create this work?
Cassette tapes provide excellent material to represent transition—they are colorful and have a distinct retro-cool look and feel. The shape of the cassette provides a uniform visual that works very well in multiples and can very easily be transformed when the magnetic coated tape is pulled from its plastic container. In addition, there is a feeling of freedom and randomness when one pulls something apart that is no longer used as originally intended, and I wanted to capture that in Audio Playback.
