Jessie Stead

247365 and Jessie Stead present The Walkman, a solo exhibition featuring new work in inter-related video, audio, light and other materials. The Walkman is loosely informed by human-scale, sidewalk insignificancies and the mutating peripatetics of the Sony Walkman, the world’s first commercially successful personal stereo, a commodity with which Stead irrelevantly shares the same birth-year.

A group of new works titled Head Stands retrofits inverted coin-operated candy machines, which when turned upside-down manifest a latent anthropomorphism. Each Head Stands’ security elements have been removed and replaced with electronic lights and theme music, intimately accessible through integrated headphones.

Collectively, this group of 12 original soundtracks embody a dimensional EP. The music itself is composed with punched tape loops made with various discarded CAUTION ribbon locally sourced around New York City. These anonymous holes are play-able through lo-fi instruments included in the installation as wall sculptures in both acoustic and electric versions.

Owners of the Walkman were able to take back their "lost" time, commuting for example, and turn it into a pleasurable experience, or add a soundtrack to their urban surroundings.

—Bull, Michael. “Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkman to Ipod”. Consuming Music Together. 2006