While Zoom and other online streaming platforms let us appear together online, the vast network infrastructure between us inevitably introduces delays, skips, and other temporal distortions. We typically do our best to ignore them, but Metric Displacement harnesses them to create unique rhythms.

This “site-specific” installation comprises three turntables streaming to an online meeting from three different locations spread across the globe. Each turntable plays one of 18 looping lock-grooves on a vinyl record. The beat that results is unique for each listener who logs into the meeting because of the particular network conditions through which they are reached by the three streams. Each day, new lock grooves are selected after the previous ones begin to physically degrade from continuous playback.