Michael Graeve

Michael Graeve is a sound and visual artist. He lives on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Castlemaine, near Melbourne (Naarm), Australia.

Since 1993 my instrument is an accumulation of record player hifi's and loudspeakers, performed and recorded as an awkward turntable orchestra.

I work with of dozens of aged hifi turntable systems, and assist them in picking themselves up. Psychoanalysis for record players. No vinyl.

They are performed and recorded as patterns of machinic hisses and hums, monochrome feedback tones and platter rhythms. For each turntable as part of a hifi system, there might be two loudspeakers; that means that the sound performance or installation is distributed multiply throughout a space, say maybe 24 loudspeakers. Like abstract colour field painting, the ingredients are deceptively simple, and it is in sequence or simultaneity that combinations of complexities develop.

I have a large turntable orchestra in Australia, a less numerous turntable orchestra stored near Munich Germany, and maybe I still have one stored in Chicago from the mid 2000's, who knows.

I have contributed to Melbourne artist-run culture as a board member/chair/vice-president at Liquid Architecture Sound Inc (2007-2021), board member and program manager at West Space Inc (2000-2004) and founding member of Grey Area Art Space (1996-1999).

My occasional label is Megalomania, Micromania.