In Charles Hardy III’s essay, I was most intrigued by his discussion of Greame Miller’s “Linked” project and Toby Butler’s “MemoryScape Audio Walks: Voices from the hidden history of the Thames.” Both of these projects utilize oral histories and other audio ephemera__ surrounding particular locations, then presents them to be heard at the locations about which the audio refers. Here, we can see a use of archival setting to alter the archive effect and affect of the audio. This is not the same as what I would refer to as archival context, like that heard in Hardy’s “Mordecai Mordant’s” audio creations wherein oral histories are surrounded by real archival recordings from the era being spoken about.

In Hardy’s (or Mordant’s) works the archive effect arises in the juxtaposing of the reflective oral histories with the archival recordings wherein the oral histories thus affirm the pastness of the archival recording and conjure temporal disparity between the two. The archive affect, then, can be seen as arising from the vibration and tone of the speakers’ voices which are identifiable as elderly, coupled with the real sounds of a world since-passed for both the recollector and the listener.

Much differently, the archival setting, rather than context, of Miller and Bulter’s works places the audio within the place of occurrence, not a mock resemblance of it. While the audio recordings may not have taken place at the location, they are only heard within the setting about which they speak, thus transforming the recordings from being listened to in (what listeners would understand to be) the setting of the interview room itself. Instead, temporal disparity is created between the since-passed place that is referenced in the audio and the listener’s experience of present place within which he/she is listening.

Perhaps a similar example will help in the differentiation I’m attempting to make between context and setting. Chapter 1 of Dan Warren’s Son of Strelka, Son of God provides listeners with a creation account while simultaneously hearing sounds from nature. Now, we know that Obama was not speaking these words out in a cricket-ridden field of the Midwest because of the collection’s description, so we understand Obama’s words to be contextualized within the nature sounds in order to conjure a temporal disparity between the time about which Obama speaks and the sound of nature that we are well-familiar with. Now, let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t know that Obama’s words have been manipulated and placed within the context of nature sounds. Rather, the audio, at least in some places, could be understood as Obama’s setting as he uttered the words heard the track.

With the first experience of audio contextualized in nature sounds, any archive effect/affect is being produced through the relationship of the speaker and the speaker’s words to the archival recordings being used as the context for the audio. In the second experience, however, a pairing of tracks, or a relationship between separate archival recordings has not yet been formed by the producer of the audio—there is only one track encompassing the speaker and the setting, leaving a relationship yet unformed. Instead, any relationship concerning the audio remains to be formed by and with the listener. The archive effect and affect are produced, thus, not in observation of an existing relationship between speaker and context, but by a participatory relationship between the listener and the understanding of what it is to be in that setting.