Ballad of the graveyard shift — Gross National Distress

Ballad of the graveyard shift

According to Zainab Mahmood, the work shifts were 4 days on, 4 days off, 3 days on, 3 days off. This brought to mind a curiosity to see what kind of music could be produced with the punch cards that workers used to mark the start and end of their shifts. The idea was to feed these punch cards into a music box that would create melodies from the holes of the punch cards. This was also inspired by the idea of piped music being played to supposedly soothe the stress experienced by workers on the factory floor. This resulted in a collaboration with Basil Tan who built a machine that could automate the motion of the punch cards through the music box. He also engineered the machine to make it look much more presentable.

I was hoping to convey the idea that the presence of the worker is vital in creating this work. If there are no holes, there would be no melody. It is ironic that the workers' presence is marked by the holes created on the punch cards. Maybe one can read this as the worker being absent from their quotidian subjective self during these shifts. Not only does the worker announce to the firms that they take up the role asked of them but also to the world. This work attempts to provide a soundtrack to that announcement.