Abbey Road (Side 2)

MEMORY HAS A MATERIAL

The Vinyl Series brings together two once-familiar formats—the vinyl record and the floppy disk—each associated with the storage and circulation of music, information and memory.

In Abbey Road (Side 2), exactly ninety vintage 3.5-inch floppy disks form the surface of the work, surrounding a custom-cut aluminum center disc with a reimagined record label. Obsolete technology becomes both material and image—a physical archive of cultural memory.

 VINYL SERIES

The Beatles
Abbey Road
Side Two

33 × 35.5 inches
Mixed media on vintage 3.5-inch floppy disks
2026

INQUIRE ABOUT THIS WORK →

ABBEY ROAD

Few album images have become as culturally embedded as Abbey Road. Released in 1969, the record occupies a particular place between music and visual memory: the crossing, the typography, the Apple label and even the physical object of the record itself have become recognizable well beyond the music they originally contained.

In Abbey Road (Side 2), that familiarity is reconstructed through another disappearing technology. Ninety vintage 3.5-inch floppy disks form the surface of the work, surrounding a custom-cut aluminum center disc. Rather than reproducing the original record label, Smith rebuilds and reimagines it element by element, drawing from the visual language of the original pressing while introducing details that move between the vinyl era and the later world of floppy disks, software and digital storage.

Side 2 also carries its own cultural associations—the closing sequence of Abbey Road, including the celebrated medley, has become inseparable from the album's identity. Here, that musical history is set against another archive of memory: floppy disks that once carried work, images, games, correspondence, information and music. The two technologies meet in a single physical object, connecting different generations of recorded memory.

Rather than reproducing the album as memorabilia, the work uses its familiarity as a point of entry. Music, obsolete technology and personal history become layered into a new physical object, asking what remains when the devices that once carried our memories disappear.

STUDIO NOTES

The center label for Abbey Road (Side 2) was developed as an artwork within the larger work. Beginning with the visual language of the original Apple Records label (specifically the 1969 French pressing), I reconstructed and reimagined its individual elements while introducing details that bridge two technological eras.

Original recording information exists alongside newly composed language referencing floppy disks, data storage and obsolete technology. Typography, production details and the perimeter text were considered individually, allowing the label to remain immediately recognizable while revealing invented details upon closer inspection.

As the companion to Abbey Road (Side 1), the Side 2 label maintains a visual dialogue with the first work while developing its own identity through the music, information and details specific to the second side of the record. This process of research, reconstruction and redesign unfolds over many hours—and often weeks—as each center label develops its own visual identity within the Vinyl Series.