Oscar Alvarez – Sound Arts Year 2

(Transcribed from a journal entry)

Before anything, I knew that I had to record in complete silence, and in a time of day in which I would be neither too tired, nor energetic- preferring a calm, mellow state of mind. My reasoning for this owed chiefly to the fact that I knew multiple sonic elements would be occurring at once in the audio paper – I never wanted the completed piece to feel ‘hollow’ or ’empty’ – so in having a clean, uncluttered recording of my voice I could easily intertwine it with other audio.

I also knew that the length of the audio paper would require a certain kind of enthusiasm in my tone, by choosing a calmer time of day, I would be able to tow the line between not falling into pure monotonous monologue and overzealous commentary.

In my practice, I do not work with my voice – I do not hear it played back to me. Therefore, it took several failed recording attempts before I felt I had reached my stride, as I became accustomed to the sound of my own voice emanating through my headphones and speakers.

Rather than fragment the process by also working with other audio and music alongside it, I decided it was best to record all my speech first and I began following the script verbatim. Yet, despite me reading the script aloud on multiple occasions, once the microphone was at my lips, an unforeseen layer of stiffness seemed to befall my words. I began slightly adjusting the script as I went, without editing the initial script document in order to maintain a natural, conversational tone. Once I had the full recording of my voice, I ‘de-essed’ and removed microphone pops for even fuller clarity.

A unique creative challenge then emerged as I began introducing the various field recordings and pre-recorded music I had created in accordance to the script. The sounds began ‘directing’ my text, seemingly demanding more space between words, or calling for different annunciation to fit a certain mood characterised by the music. Also, it appeared that not all my prepared sounds would coincide naturally against my voice – faster or more rhythmic textures often clashed with the clarity of my words.

My method for scripting consisted of using my previously made blog post – detailing the rough ‘flow’ of my audio paper, and ‘expanding’ it into a full script.

As I began writing, several problems became apparent, problems that felt unique to the audio paper format:

Firstly, my natural instinct was to assume a typical essay-like academic tone, formal with a strictly measured amount of emotional inflection. Yet, as I began to read aloud, the phrasing felt cold and austere- to the extent where a recording would have made apparent that the scripted words betrayed my actual personality, resulting in a feeling of disingenuity. This was at odds with my initial creative philosophy I had formulated – I had wanted the audio paper to have a sense of my personality as, after all, my own voice would be at the forefront of the work.

I began reading aloud as I typed, simultaneously.

Where I would feel myself naturally pausing, or changing my speaking rhythm, I would attempt at translating this into the script. I imagined also, if the script was an in-person conversation, and soon I realised that without mentioning ‘myself’ in the writing, the words would sound disconnected and unnatural and ultimately – like I was reading from a script. Therefore, I made sure to directly include a sense of myself in the script (“I believe, I think, for me” etc.).

By maintaining this more personal voice alongside a traditional informative approach, I was able to accurately reflect my initial creative approach.

Key words and concepts: Time, memory, nostalgia, hauntology, longing, tension, diagnostic and symptomatic music.

Originally written into a notebook, the following text is an attempt at realising an organised (yet vague) flow of the paper’s content:

–

1. MEMORY IS A POTENT SOURCE FOR SONIC EXPLORATIONS

• Sound is an invisible medium. Sound is a temporal medium.
• The ghostly, transitory and invisible state of sound interacts uniquely with the intangibility of memory.
• Objects, images and writings can be preserved forever. Sound occurs and dissipates. the same is true with memory.
• It is therefore that in their similarities, sound can be used to explore memory and vice versa.

2. A LISTENER IS A MEDIUM WHO DRAWS MEANING FROM SOMETHING THAT IS NOT ENTIRELY THERE

• So often , sound functions as a metaphor or representation of immaterial worlds.
• Listening is constructed from narratives of myth, fiction and the silent arts.
• A close listener will draw meaning from the intangible nature of sound and in doing so, the listeners own shards of memory and scraps of nostalgia will be used to colour this meaning
• Therefore with nostalgia as such a potent emotive pool, it is no great surprise that so much music is created as an ‘homage’ or ‘tribute’ to a culture or sound that has existed before.

3. YET IN THIS OFTEN DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT FINDING MEANING OR CONNECTION THROUGH NOSTALGIA, THERE IS POTENTIAL DANGER

• If we rely on the allure of nostalgia, we run risk of trapping ourselves in a culture that constantly recycles the past. This blocks the ability to create new sounds and new futures for ourselves. I’d like to argue that like Mark Fisher, this has already happened.
• Opening the door to any music venue here in South London, I am greeted by the tired ghosts of rock or the empty husks of punk music. There is a tangible yearning for idealised past glories.
• I’d like to propose that such music or music scene is ‘symptomatic‘ – it is a by-product of what Mark Fisher describes as ‘Capitalist Realism’ – the belief that nothing outside the current system is possible. Nostalgia works in tandem with capitalist realism by making radical transformation seem unthinkable – If the only “good times” are behind us, then no future alternative feels believable.

4. SYMTPOM AND DIAGNOSIS – MY PROPOSAL

• Music can be symptomatic: “Artic Monkeys airbrush cultural time and appeal to this endless return and timelessness of rock”- Mark Fisher
  • I believe a great deal of music written today acts is a symptom of a culture that is choking on its own lack of identity, forced to idealise a past that never really existed – a glossy re-enactment “Nostalgia… is not for the past as it was lived, but for the past as mythologized.”
    — Ghosts of My Life.
  • It’s a slow cancellation of the future – nostalgic culture isn’t just backward-looking; it’s politically immobilizing because it trains people to see the past as the only source of meaningful experience.
• Yet, music can act as diagnosis: Music can identify this cultural yearning for new futures, new identity and harness it to create something new:

-Mark Fisher noted that Burial understood the continuum of British dance music, and his position as an artist in relation to the near past , the collective euphoria of the 90s.

-With this acknowledgment, Burial stages his work as an attempt to return to this period of nostalgia, yet finds himself unable to continue it in a much bleaker 21st century.

This perspective does not come from saying things were great in the ’90s and now they’re not. It is to say, there was a trajectory running through post-war culture, a trajectory Fisher calls popular modernism, which created high expectations.

That trajectory terminated and it’s the craving for the futures that we projected from the 20^th century, that is the crucial thing. What we’ve got in the 21^st century is a confusion of the contemporary with the modern, in fact the contemporary cannot deliver the modern; there’s a kind of depthless contemporary.

In a sense, Burial is emblematic of what I would describe as diagnostic music. It acknowledges the past and its influences while identifying the yearnings of nostalgia

The script for my audio paper, written with audio cues and assorted notes.

Audio Paper Script Draft: 

How are Sound, Memory and Nostalgia connected, and what does this mean for the future of music? 

[BEIJING AIRPORT FIELD REC.] 

Hearing this, I’m desperately trying to recall the images of that now half-remembered day. The sweltering heat seemed to pulsate throughout that place, the glass latticed ceiling, high above, spinning in my exhaustion. I hadn’t slept for almost a day, and I wouldn’t in my eight hours at that Beijing Airport, so perhaps it’s only natural my memory is so fogged and fragmented.  

Now, half a year later, my only tether, the only thing that ‘colours’ my memory to that time and place is this recording I took on my phone. In my bleary state, the sound echoed through the empty white halls of the airport – in a location and language I couldn’t perceive.  

[FIELD REC PLAYS AGAIN, THEN FOLLOWED BY MUSIC] 

–A change of location from the previous section. This must be perceivable to the listener (e.g. indoors to outdoors) —  

-Ideas to consider: Echoing footsteps (perhaps separately recorded and layered on top of my voice, for clarity) which could intertwine with music. 

In his book Sinister Resonance, David Toop notes that sound, an invisible, temporal medium, reflects and interacts with memory in a multitude of ways. It is ghostly and transitory; it occurs and dissipates. The same is true with memory.  

Therefore, in their similarities, sound can be used to explore memory and vice versa.  

For example, a loss of memory is a silence, often accompanied in old people by a loss of hearing. Scattered by the cold winds of age, sonic events of the past grow fainter. Loss of cultural memory also, is silence…Ilya Kabakov’s 1993 work, School No. 6, on the site of Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, is a reminder of how memory survives in scraps of nostalgia and shards of memory.  In desolate, abandoned school rooms, a dusty violin lies on a bench. As if the children had left music practice one afternoon, then never returned. In the intensity of their silence, a faint music asks to be heard.  

[MUSIC FADES BACK IN, SLOWLY] 

–Change of location, outdoors to indoors, more intimate– 

Toop goes on to explain that a close listener is like a medium, attempting to summon meaning from something that isn’t entirely there – that sound often functions as a tether to immaterial, metaphorical worlds.  

I believe that through memory, particularly nostalgia – can be used help ‘colour’ the images and meaning summoned by a close listener.  

The skipping of my family’s mixtape CD, a now long misplaced soundtrack to car journeys throughout the countryside. Droning church bells and the laughter of schoolchildren – these sonic artifacts are woven into my subconscious, and on hearing them – my desperate nostalgia colours these images. 

It’s clear therefore, that memory – particularly nostalgia can act as such a vast pool of creative potential to draw from.  

It’s no surprise that so much music is created as an ‘homage’ or ‘tribute’ to cultures and sound that have existed before, even subtly- referential material sneaks its way into so much of what we consume today. 

[MUSIC FADES IN] 

I’d like to argue, in this audio paper, that in this often-desperate attempt at finding meaning or connection through nostalgia, danger is certain to arise.  

[THE MUSIC INTRODUCES MINIMAL PERCUSSIVE CUTS/CLICKS FOR THE FIRST TIME]  

The temptation of nostalgia is irresistible, it’s exquisite yearning, bittersweet romanticism and hazy comfort provides an incredible allure for artists.  

Yet, if we rely on the allure of nostalgia, we run risk of trapping ourselves in a culture that constantly recycles the past, blocking the ability to create new sounds and futures for ourselves. I’d like to argue that like Mark Fisher, this has already happened. 

Open the door to any music venue here in South London, and you’ll be greeted by the tired ghosts of rock or the empty husks of punk music. There is a tangible yearning for idealised past glories. 

[SILENCE] 

—This is my main point; silence will help convey the importance– 

I’d like to propose that this phenomenon could be dubbed ‘symptomatic music‘ – symptomatic of a culture that is choking on its own lack of identity, forced to idealise a past that never really existed in a kind of renactment. 

Ultimately, this is a by-product of what Mark Fisher describes as ‘Capitalist Realism’ – the belief that nothing outside the current system is possible. Nostalgia works in tandem with capitalist realism by making radical transformation seem unthinkable. 

If the only “good times” are behind us, then no future alternative feels believable. 

However, I believe that while music may act as a symptom, there is also diagnosis. 

[PLAY BURIAL HERE(?)] 

Mark Fisher described Burial’s work as a diagnostic evaluation of societies relationship with nostalgia. Noting that Burial understands the continuum of British dance music, and his position as an artist in relation to the near past- the collective euphoria of the 90s. 

Acknowledging this, Burial stages his work as an attempt to return to this period of nostalgia, yet finding himself unable to continue it in a much bleaker 21st century. 

This perspective does not come from saying things were great in the 90s and now they’re not. Rather, there was a trajectory running through post-war culture, a trajectory Fisher calls popular modernism, which created high expectations. That trajectory terminated and it’s the craving for the futures that we projected from the 20^th century that is the crucial thing.  

[BURIAL FADE OUT] 

Where I propose ‘symptomatic music’s existence, its opposite also arises. 

Burial’s music is what I would call ‘diagnostic music’ because it diagnoses nostalgia’s problem, accepting its tensions and proposes something new. 

In ‘The Poetics of Space’ Gaston Bachelard perfectly encapsulates this sentiment –   

“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it” 

This duality of sustaining connections to the past yet endeavouring to ‘pull away’ and manifest something new is the essence of what I describe as diagnostic music. 

[MUSIC FADE IN] 

A temptation lies in wallowing in the stagnant nature of the 21^st century’s music culture and the gloom of capitalist realism – I’m certainly guilty of it – yet, I think in the face of such an oppressive atmosphere, an equally potent resistant force can emerge.  

The more I consider it , the idea of diagnostic music exists as more than just analysis of contemporary conditions but also a creative objective or challenge – one that can encourage us to evaluate our situation both in the now, and in the near-past – critically understanding the tensions of the nostalgic urge and harnessing it to push towards new futures.  

With this, I have optimism. 

Power, Politics and Performance

During this session I generated keywords and potential questions to be used for my audio concept.

From the early stages I noted, broadly, that I wanted my audio paper to have a deliberate musical undercurrent that intertwines with the research and general atmosphere. Namely, this would involve soundtracking the audio paper with something unintrusive enough that it doesn’t distract from the information but enough to lend a faint musical tone throughout – rather than scattered fragments of field recordings, for example. Principally, this ‘tone’ should unify the sonic aspects of my paper to the informational intent it holds.

I also considered where I was to situate myself in the recording – my initial instinct was to remove all sense of self from the audio – that my voice should simply act as a conveyor of information without inflicting the work with a sense of ‘personality’ and that I shouldn’t aim to tailor my recording environment to an aesthetic purpose. As though doing so would, perhaps, de-value the audio paper as inauthentic.

However, upon re-reading Felds quote – “I am always present in the recording…Even if that presence is not audibly legible to the listener” this led me to re-evaluate my position of impartiality towards my sense of self. Simply, I began to consider that in the act of recording my own voice (let alone the conscious act of creating a recording) it is immensely or impossible difficult to divorce a sense of personality from it. Therefore, I decided in the same way I was deliberately curating a soundtrack element to the piece, the conscious injection of my character into the work was also a freeing creative tool that could certainly supplement the information given- as opposed to an atonal, robotic narrator.

The keywords and questions I generated focused on ‘memory’ and ‘nostalgia’. At this stage, simply the concept of “What does memory sound like?” is my root idea to be developed. For this, I would like to explore ideas of hauntology , and how ambient music can draw on ideas of memory to create its own worlds.

Also during the session, Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work deeply interested me.

Hamdan’s use of sound as a very practical means of investigation into issues of human rights violations and state crimes proved to be immensely inspiring. Using the unique attributes of sound (always leaking, often uncontrollable) as a tangible source of evidence and political action is a practice entirely new to me.

Sound and music has, and always will be, intersecting with politics and power. So it is therefore that, to me, the idea of sound being used in such a overtly practical way , almost entirely removed from pure aesthetic purpose, was especially intriguing and powerful.