Audio Mash-Up: Dancing Addictions

Listen to the sound culture experiment here (5min) -> Dancing Addictions

The cut-up and time displacement:

During week 9 a passage regarding the sonic destabilization of time in our readings caught my attention. It brought to light one of William Burrough’s favorite chance operations in the creation of his cut-ups, explored in his literary work Ticket. Burrough’s would erratically move the tape (or in many cases, the word) over the playback head of the recording device thus breaking the recording free from the usual time vector attached to many sonic recordings. In a passage from Ticket Burrough’s explained it this way:

“Now listen to this.” The words were smudged together. They snarled and whined and barked. It was as if the words themselves were called into question and forced to give up their hidden meanings. “Inched tape . . the same recording you just heard pulled back and forth across the head . . You can get the same effect by switching a recording on and off at very short intervals. Listen carefully and you will hear words that were not in the original text: ‘do it-do it-do it . . yes I will will will do it do it do it . . really really really do it do it do it . . neck neck neck . . oh yes oh yes oh yes . .’

As someone with primary experience in broadcast journalism, budding in an often tape less digital production age I was compelled to attempt my first reel-to-reel analog audio recording so that I might experiment with this displacement of time and technology. Interestingly, Burrough’s was perhaps never able to fully realize his ideas of time displacement and cut-up audio in a production environment because of technological limitations. Yet, in order to truly experience his ideas of individually controlling the recorded sound using the playback head I would have to step back to dated technology. The artistic challenge was set for me to erratically alter the time relationship of a recorded piece of audio using analog reel-to-reel recording equipment. Even more importantly, the challenge was set to use technology to create sound not to record it.

In broadcasting everything is about time, precise time. Shows are 30 or 60 minutes and rarely are started late or in progress. Commercial advertising, broadcasting bread-and-butter is based off of 30 and 60 seconds spots. Not a second is wasted, each very carefully calculated to provide the largest payoff for the business. The narrative formula is linear with a clear beginning, middle and end in three acts. The idea of taking these linear narrative, time-based pieces and interacting with them on a personal and unconstrained, nonprogrammable fashion seemed a potential delight yet mystifying task for me.

The dancing process, creating a sound through time displacement and cut-up:

Major influences in my composition decisions were to use audio recording devices as instruments, not tools in the creation of a sonic experience. Because I feel today’s technology does all it can to remove individual freedom of the recording artist from the process of creating sound I turned to modified reel-to-reel recorders. One device was left in tact for recording and playback of material digital obtained through CDs and the Internet, this would be the record deck. The other was dismantled and the motor drive disabled so that I could freely pull the tape of the playback head in forward and reverse, this would be the playback deck. I attached two small handles to each of the reels on the playback deck so that I could more easily pull the tape in forward and reverse. My hand and arms served as the motor working as an extension of the technology. I stood while manipulating the machine engaging in a dance similar to that described by Walter Murch, a film editor, in his book, In the Blink of an Eye.

Audio was fed to recording deck and I commenced in a digital-to-analog conversation of all the materials both in a straight linear fashion and in a random cut-up method similar to the work of Burrough’s. Two methods of cut-up recording were experimented with, one where I frequently engaged and disengaged the recording head and one where I simply applied pressure to the tape reels to prevent them from feed tape. I performed cut-up recording both with and without headphones, offering a completely random result and a result influence by my editorial decisions.

Once the audio was captured I proceeded to use the playback deck to feed audio into an Avid Media Composer for capture back into digital format. Here my influences in controlling the playback speed and direction were realized. It took a significant amount of practice to properly control the speed of the playback, but through lots of trial-and-error I was able to achieve interesting results. I truly felt as though I was part of the technology, not merely using it as a tool. There is simply no way similar results could have been reproduced on digital recording equipment. I was truly free to make my own artistic decisions on the speed and direction with which the linear-recorded audio would be played back. I felt as through I was creating sound, rather than recording it.

Nearly three hours of raw time manipulated audio was recorded. I used Avid Media Composer software to juxtapose the material in a narrative fashion that developed out of the time manipulations themselves. In other words, I allowed the sounds I created to be joined to create my narrative composition, rather than forcing the narrative intentions into the recordings themselves. I certainly had some ideas of where I wanted the narrative to go, but I felt it so important to my understanding of sound culture to allow the sounds to create the narrative, not strictly my intentions for the sounds. This was a major challenge for me, yet the most valuable part of this composition.

Influences:

So much of the work on the piece was influenced by all of the artists and discussions throughout the semester. To this point in my life my experience with sound recording has been just that, a recording. I would record the sonic waves, edit them into a linear narrative and process them to mp3 like a formula research paper. Listening to works this semester gave me pause, gaining an understanding that the communication and emotional power of a sonic wave is not in its textual meaning or direction, but in the tone of the sound itself and true sound art isn’t only about narrative text. It is about pace, tone, time and sonic connection with the sound artists.

I didn’t find many artists that frequently and regularly used erratic movement of the tape over the play head. After completed the composition, it’s not overly surprising why. While adding a very distinct and personal connection to the piece I found listening to the process of creating the sound more rewarding than repeated playback on an mp3 player.

Walter Murch:

http://www.transom.org/guests/review/200504.review.murch.html
Walter Murch is a film editor, yet, his approach to the construction of a narrative and becoming part of the technology, rather than simply using it as a tool was a major influence in how I proceeded with this sonic exploration. When editing film Murch would stand with his editor pulling the frames of video over the viewer in search of the perfect edit. How he interacted with the machine in the creation of art is something I’ve longed to experience and I was able to do so here. I’ve never felt so in control of what I was creating. The machine was no longer dictating the sounds I was producing, I was, freely and in control of the sonic time.

William Burroughs:

As I mentioned in my introduction a major influence was the writing of Burrough’s. His cut-up method, repetition and idea that freeing a recording from its time constraints encouraged me to seek out both analog and digital technology as extensions of myself when creating a composition. Random cuts,

Darf Punk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw
As silly as it might seem the very sounds of this popular group are constructed similarly to my composition goals – using technology as instruments. Their level of free and personal interaction with the samples that create their music and sound has been something I’ve enjoyed in past and was interested to learn and read about.

Venues:

The elements of this composition definitely lend themselves to an sonic installation where the audience and composer are allowed to interact with – to become part of – the technology. And I’m excited that a buzz has been created on campus I teach broadcast journalism at, to the point I will actually have a chance to setup the process as an installation during a presentation in March.

There are possibilities for distribution through other channels on the Web including traditional locations like