For me, listening to Dan Warren’s Son of Strelka, Son of God was highly enjoyable. I’ve read some of Barack Obama’s memoir writing before, so, while listening I tried to pick out phrases and sentences that I recognized from that reading. I thought that the ways that Warren combined these phrases to create an epic story (at least in the first 5 tracks) of Strelka’s birth and the rise and fall of a civilization was incredibly creative and sounded convincing. If it wasn’t for the short description of Warren’s project, I might have wondered whether President Obama ever wrote a biblical-style fiction story that is just now being released.

Why did I find it so convincing? Partly because the story seemed to build logically, but mostly because the audio tracks were flawlessly edited (or at least they were flawless to my untrained ears). I couldn’t figure out where the phrases separated from one another. I couldn’t tell where Obama’s words ended and Warren’s intervention began—other than the background music, of course. This perception was in sharp contrast to the other audio clips that we listened to: In Kahn’s Reagan Speaks for Himself, there are many obvious interventions where Reagan repeats phrases with the same intonation and background noise, indicating a replicated audio cycle; Hardy’s various audio projects embed sound effects and audio clips that remind the listener that Hardy is working with appropriated audio; but Son of Strelka, Son of God is not obviously appropriated if we consider the audio evidence alone.

This prompted me, once again, to think about archival fabrication. I keep circling around questions of authenticity, and for audio projects, I wonder: is it easier to create and disseminate fabricated audio?

The question is related to an anxiety described by Baron that is derived from the fear that advancing technology will allow easier fabrication. Baron uses Forest Gump’s appropriation of archival footage and the term “seamlessness” to illustrate this anxiety:

This notion of ‘seamlessness’ […] suggests that it is the fear that the ‘seam’—which marks the boundary between the found actuality elements and fictional elements of the image—will not be recognized that is ultimately most worrisome, particularly in relation to viewers with insufficient extratextual or historical knowledge of the imaged events (Baron, 59).

I hear this “seamlessness” in Son of Strelka, Son of God. What is worrisome is not the text itself—the text is clearly fictitious—but that the “seamlessness” exhibits the possibility of audio projects to trick the viewer into belief. Especially since listening to audio provides less opportunities to notice inconsistencies. In a video there are many clues that allow us to recognize the piece as fabricated: video editing, sound editing, visual extratextual knowledge, and auditory extratextual knowledge. In audio, however there is only sound editing and auditory extratextual knowledge. If there is no evidence of choppy editing and no explicit audio that runs contrary to extratextual knowledge, then a fabricated audio piece could easily be accepted as legitimate audio.

This…is a bit paranoid. But my paranoia is fed by Hardy’s abstract definition of aural histories’ effects on the listener. If aural histories “speak to us in more mysterious and personal ways” (Hardy, 153) then how will we recognize when they are speaking to us falsely? I think that if a scholar who has explored aural histories for years cannot articulate their effects on us, then we should be wary of deception.