Everyday life is great fodder for art. Whether it’s the 19th century literary realists or the musicians and visual artists who use found objects to create their work, the mundane can be a great source of inspiration.
Take, for instance, an office worker who decided to record a whole bunch of sounds from their job and turn them into a haunting ode to the ol’ 9 to 5. Like John Cage stuck inside Ron Livingston’s body, a YouTube video from user ThePustulioFoolio (not, we have to assume, their given name) creates strange music out of everything from keyboards typing and pre-recorded phone messages to printers chugging out pages, doorbells and scanners beeping, and the sound of a stapler punching shut.
The video’s page doesn’t give too much detail about how this came together, saying only: “I’m quitting my job soon and as a last hurrah I spent a few hours (too many) recording random samples around my office and made them into music.” As a memento of the daily grind, it’s just about perfect: the track starts off like a Monday morning daydream, the background hum of an office forming into a coherent tune whose melody wanders back and forth between uneasy discordance and steadfast, determined cheerfulness.
It’s a great summary of office life, presented entirely through the sounds of…office life. While we have movies and TV shows—The Office, Office Space, and a laundry list of others—that have found a creative wellspring in the workplace, now, at long last, there’s music to go along with them. Thanks unfulfilling jobs: you help make good art.
