Fresh Laundry: Forget Spotify, try the spin cycle

Aucklanders can listen to tunes while waiting for their washing courtesy of art installation Fresh Laundry.

Fresh Laundry put out an open call in February asking artists for songs “dying on their hard drives”, artist and musician Jefferson Chen, AKA Goodspace told RNZ’s Culture 101.

Over 70 responded and that compilation C Sides is playing on washing machines repurposed as jukeboxes at five laundromats across the city.

The unreleased tracks are “basically songs that they love but didn’t know what to do with”, Chen says.

“We want the underbelly of Aotearoa music, and that’s the stuff we love.”

Fresh Laundry designer Quentin Lind always found laundromats inspiring places, he says.

“I used to just go to the laundromats as kind of a space that you could go to and read, or listen to music, or do things.

“I think often people would do those things in a cafe, but to work or sit in a space like a laundromat, there’s no obligation to be moving on.”

They also have some “cool audio components”, he says.

“There’s some kind of ambient sound…and the visual language is cool, the soap smells good.”

Laundromats produce their own unique sounds, he says.

“If you get a bunch of washing machines and there’s a screw in one person’s pocket and a peg or a lighter in another person’s pocket, they all kind of sync up like drum machines.”

Eleventeen Ceramics came on board to make objects people might come across at a laundromat from packets of detergent to lighters, there are even ceramic cigarette butts hidden in the jukebox-cum washing machines’ soap drawers, Chen says.

“The basic goal is just a moment of discovery in an ordinary setting.

“And I think that has a huge range of nuance and colour for each person. So, as long as there’s a moment of discovery, a moment of surprise, then that’s what we want people to take away.”