relevant reading is really revelatory

Thus, to listen to a sound is to listen to the entire body of the sound world in microdetail.

My thoughts exactly. This article by Brandon LaBelle loudly describes how the potential for sound to represent place is untapped and oft-disregarded. He makes an interesting statement about ‘sites’ and ‘non-sites’ which are the place in which a soundscape is hosted, and where it refers to – “[…] in so far as sounds are removed form their indigenous environment and composed into a “musical” work […] yet these sounds are given weight by their continual referral to the actual site of their origin”

To me, a soundscape represents a place but also a time period, a culture and a conversation. These four points will be the basis for my Brief 4 content where I’ll yet again create a sound piece. For Building 20, I want to create a music between key events in its history, linking a story that wasn’t realised and transporting the listeners to along a (mostly) non-fiction sound journey.

LaBelle talks about how recording a place to bring it to life can alter its reality, informing that “one has to content with the interferences of its very representation, mediation, and ultimate dislocation”. Time is my interference here, as the stories I want other to hear have already passed. This could be to my benefit though because no one can question a little creative license. There’s a few newspaper clippings I’ve found in online archives that tell court cases in great detail, so there should be no dislocation in my representation of them.

This is a reading that I actually enjoyed and found useful to my project (probably because it just solidifies my opinions on sound). Thank you very much Rachel!

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