American Trilogy, 60 sec. digital audio, digital print, text

American Trilogy was created for Off-Register: The Sound of Print, a catalog of works that explores the influence of sound in contemporary printmaking. American Trilogy combines sampled audio, a digital print, and the following semi-fictional artist's statement (excerpt):

I began collecting eight-track cassettes and players several years ago, always hoping to find a truly unique home recording. On a hot summer day in downtown Detroit, at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, I hit the jackpot: a black plastic eight-track labeled "Don Hinton, Recorded Live, Ramada Inn, Detroit Metro Airport, 3/75". The tape contained forty minutes of a lounge act in the Las Vegas styles of Elvis Presley and Tom Jones. I cringed with pleasure as Don stumbled through such classics as "Burning Love" and "American Trilogy", a heart-stirring Southern medley immortalized by Elvis. Then, to my horror, the tape became hopelessly tangled, too creased and brittle to ever play again. After hours of careful splicing, I managed to reconstruct a few seconds of Don's stage banter and his rendition of "American Trilogy", using Elvis's own version to fill in the missing parts.