X Marks the Bokship

Launch of Groove Script video and publication by Rachel Cattle & Steve Richards  
Published by AND Publishing, 2013

Groove Script takes its title from an article written by Moholy-Nagy in 1923 entitled New Forms In Music: Potentialities Of The Phonograph. In the article he posits the idea of a groove script alphabet...that the phonograph be transformed from an instrument of reproduction into one of production; this will cause the sound phenomenon itself to be created on the record, which carried no prior acoustic message, by the incision of groove-script lines as required.
The film and publication take on this notion of potentiality to explore the ‘groove-script’ and the processes that might enliven and radicalize ideas and possibilities of the independent artist. Voices include Poly Styrene, Dennis Potter, Ken Loach, Townes Van Zandt and Beryl Ritchie, the only female cutting engineer in the music industry during the 1970’s. Images are a collection of found photographs once belonging to an amateur photography enthusiast, hand developed in a dark-room. The photocopier, light from a super-eight projector, slide cases and string get the job of bringing the groove-script to life – one of continual improvisation, remembering and re-enlivening past changes to destabilize the present.