There are one or two things which stood out to me in listening to these very different approaches to sound art, ways to characterize the relationship between the source text and its repurposing. One is the relationship or attitude towards the appropriated text itself — clearly the Reagan piece seems to be making a stronger gesture towards a political statement than Son of Strelka, Son of God’s use of Obama’s voice; even though I looked around and saw that the artist did intend for it to be a commentary on Obama’s elevated style of rhetoric and around the near-Messianic resonance his campaign and early presidency gained for his followers. I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed that, though; it could have been merely using Obama for the aural qualities of his voice or for its recognizability. Even the titles point out this type of difference, it seems.

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.

It seems that the question of ethical appropriation, or ethical use of appropriated sound recordings, is located in the act of editing. There is a violence there, a “cleaving” that is natural to the archive, as it is often mandated by the space restrictions (temporal or physical) of storage or creation: hours of testimony must be compressed into a ten minute news segment. Or, original intention for the media is subverted/reconstructed/made new. But is it possible that the decision to record (a person’s voice, a natural sound, an instrumental roar) marks the entry point for ethical discussion? I wonder this because to record is to create, as Hardy suggests, from a real voice or acoustic event

“…a close facsimile of their vibrations captured by electro-acoustic technologies” (148).

The recording is the first inscription. Not the thing itself but its facsimile. There is another cleavage—captured instants—that otherwise might have drifted into chaotic memory (heard and forgotten) or passed unremarkably into a collision of open-air vibrations. The audio archive is those collected pieces of recording technology. Working with the voices of Robert Creeley and Charles Olson at Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, I listened to digitized recordings in the WPR’s web archive, I also handled a clunky cassette player placed on a table in the physical room to access lectures and readings not yet digitized, but stored on tape and kept on shelves in a closet just behind the door to the curator’s office.

Maybe, memory is the first inscription. Hardy makes the distinction that “[m]y memory, narrated through the sound vibrations of my voice, is another piece of history animated through sound” (148). Memory narrated by the body. I think Robert Pinsky says the medium of poetry is not language, but the column of the body through which air flows.

I appreciate what I understood as Hardy’s lingering desire make audio art beyond the audio documentary/oral history documentary. The expansion Hardy seems to be hoping for is a move towards materiality and the construction of space—soundscapes—rather than narrative. Narrative has a place in the construction, but it is no longer central to the document. Hardy points to Graeme Miller’s “Linked.” The public installation he cites as being “[b]illed as ‘a landmark in sound, an invisible artwork, a walk’” (159). In the creation of the soundscape or audio walk history is returned to the body through geography. Rather than sound pumped into the ears through headphones or ear-buds, the body occupies the same space as sound—it affects the skin.

The audio archive is the body. It not only determines how we sound, how we hear, and how we record: why do more than two channels of audio become disorienting? Is the body the site of first inscription? (Is that different from memory?) I think of Derrida’s discussion of circumcision as the “immemorial archive…on your body proper.” And I wonder to what degree the creation of space through sound—and particularly the sound of archival audio fragments, because these are the fragments captured outside of memory as facsimiles—is part of a desire to return (ethically like restitution) memory, and the physical experience of sound.

Like the shooting techniques that discussed in Baron’s The Archive Effect, Hardy also brings the recording technology that helps uncover the history that may be forgotten long ago. Hardy makes a repeated mention of “audio art” that develops from “shattered radio, phonograph record, audiocassette, and CD into an expanding option of new media”. These techniques skills disseminated for decades have greatly affected the development of oral history. But after I finish listening to the “Regan speaks for himself”, I start to doubt whether there is a gap between the appropriated audio track and research of the real history. In this track, obvious repetition and pauses are appropriated, which makes me doubt whether the producer of this audio is trying to stress something on purpose. The appropriated part will definitely impacts on people’s different understanding of this history. In the words under the audio track, it says that this audio is made of two versions from different time period of Regan. This kind of mixture definitely helps present one possible understanding of history in that period, but how can I tell whether the “one possible understanding” is getting closer to the real history? What if it is made out of some reasons that will distort the true story? I think I’d prefer to hear the original versions of each audio track, which make me feel more persuasive.

I agree with Hardy argument that “Audio art and oral history have a natural affinity. Storytelling and reminiscence, as we oral historians repeatedly intone, are by their nature aural forms” (58). In the “This Car to the Ballpark”, it seems that extra sound effect of melodies is embedded into the audio track, which offers the listeners to look into the perception of aesthetic in terms of audio art. For those who barely have any history knowledge, the audio art sounds fascinating and attracting. But in the perspective of history research, I still believe that it may somewhat affect our interpretation to the reality when we are trying to get a glimpse back into the history.

Apart from the consideration for authentic and professional research, I actually like the idea of preserving the history orally. Hardy mentions that “Oral history interviews are performative, and each person’s vocalizations-language, accent, intonation, sonority, cadence, tonality, vocabulary-the whole complex symphony of verbal expression”. It strikes me that there is a crossing point of art and history. Imaging people acting themselves in an audio arena and murmuring the old stories in a mysterious and personal way, by which the invisible memory is transformed to the material that can be preserved ever since.

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.

Charles Hardy’s use of quadraphonic audio to create pieces of “audio ephemera” such as “This Car to the Ballpark” are not just aural artwork, but soundscapes. The movement of a train across the four speakers and the layering of sounds such as rain and crickets behind singing and William Robison speaking create the illusion of various levels of proximity to the listener. The (abstract, nonmaterial) train appears to travel southwest to northeast as the whistling sound that emanates from it moves from one speaker to another (while in fact, the original audio is flat). In this way, the audio-scape is made three-dimensional through form.

Hardy creates a similar affect when he pairs a woman’s narration with the jangle of a name tag and the pitter-patter of dog paws in “Virgins.” The narrator tells about meeting a man at the same time the sound of his voice emerges, giving the listener both the voice of recollection and the present-tense audio of the plot. In this way, the piece of audio art conveys two temporalities at once. While not as synesthetic as the “movement” in quadraphonic audio tracks, this technique constructs a sort of travel that’s imagined.

This clear manipulation of “space” and “time” seems to be an integral element in aural art making, unlike the more historical audio pieces that Hardy’s career focuses on. However, the presence of these spatial and temporal illusions in Mordecai Mordant’s Audio Ephemera reminds a listener that these aural devices are available to historians and journalists too. While historians typically attend to the structure of audio with a fidelity to “fact,” these topographical and temporal manipulations are possible in the development of those truthful narratives too. In fact, I can recall Ira Glass of This American Life explaining how radio newscasts will switch from one journalist to another to give the illusion that the newscaster delivering a specific story is somehow closer to the real action. This illusion of temporality and geography seems to be one of the elements that Hardy celebrates through his artwork—one of the “performative elements” that he hopes will keep historians and documentarians interested in the form of audio and its true material, the sounds themselves (159).

While I’m wary of a historian getting too exuberant about these techniques and can envision a misguided attempt to create propaganda, I agree that developing these technical skills will make historians better analysts of audio and its aural devices. A strong understanding of the devices available to audio recorders and mixers enables a historian to investigate the integrity of any produced piece of oral history. In this way, Charles Hardy has the expertise to both create and analyze complex sound landscapes, but also to fabricate audio history, if he should so choose.

However, it feels unfair to evaluate Hardy’s work in these ethics. Mordecai Mordant’s Audio Ephemera is a nostalgic celebration of sounds that are easily overlooked and lost. The presence of the whistling train or William Robinson’s muffled mumbling—and the ability to play each again and again—is the point in and of itself. They’re ephemera in an ephemeral medium—the sections that would be edited out for the very purpose of “sticking to the facts” or “point.” Ironically, maybe it’s the art, which uses these manipulative techniques to map space and sound, that creates the “truer” history—one that presents the sounds alone rather than the meaning that language fashions those sounds into.