My audio paper was delivered in a soft, meditative voice to complement the poetic concept of the topic discussed. Whilst written with an academic tone, it makes a constant comparison of turntablism to the earth, which fills the audio paper with metaphors, which works well with the poetic concept. Perhaps, however, this was too heavily focused on, which meant that the audio paper lacked depth of content. The bulk of the audio was my own narration, leaving the paper feeling quite thinly textured. Personally, I am a fan of this, but I am aware that this may bore many listeners. Given the context of examined work, the ten minute time constraint is what makes the focus on the style of prose a problem here. There was too much of a heavy focus on the same point, which I loved the richness of description of and detail too, but takes away from the listener’s experience of knowledge. Regardless, some insights into the art of crate digging, the foundations of the popular music industry, and the environmental impact of the vinyl industry were given.
As someone whose words are often misinterpreted due to the speed at which I speak (which also sometimes causes entire passages of sound to be lost from words, or even whole words entirely), I found it important to really take my time when speaking. The clarity of the words and audio is undeniable here. I found it important to add audio from the piece I spoke about, as I want the listener to gauge a full understanding of what I am speaking about. This also allows space for pretty, but delicate sound design, allowing for fragments of my experiment with Maria Chavez’s abstract turntablism technique to be heard throughout, as well as adding a sense of physicality to some words and explanations.
Although I did not get to interview an established vinyl collector working within the vinyl industry, I did carry out an interview as part of my research. I found that interviewing my friend, Maddie Corleone, allowed for the conversation to flow naturally, with our ideas bouncing off of each other for a whole half hour. This provided much good content for perhaps a future document more centred around dance music culture, but also provided some gems of wisdom which I embedded scarcely throughout the audio paper. Again here, the time constraint became a problem; I felt very limited as to how much of the interview I could include without forfeiting my script.
On a very honest note, the biggest downfall of my audio paper was the lack of focussed research. Time constraints did, still however, hinder the display of knowledge gathered from research particularly on my words about sustainability. It would have been wise to base my points on research, rather than the other way, as there is so much literature, and one can interpret a whole host of ideas from just one line of academic prose, yet it feels so difficult to do so the other way around. I would have also loved to have spoken more on the art of abstract turntablism, as that is where the idea for this audio paper stemmed from in the first place. I would like to note that whilst I am aware this isn’t particularly of academic standard, this audio paper was written from a place of the heart and the soul. With this, I mean that the ideas discovered in the audio paper are ideas that without the guide of this course, and consequently the research I carried out, I would not have been able to verbalise. This process has taught me that within the realm of sound art, my purpose is to use and create academia that provides explanation for intrinsic human qualities and needs.