The audio essay is a new topic for me, at first, I thought of it as a critical academic paper in narrated text form using sound environments as descriptive aids to better immerse the listener in the topic. After our first seminar and personally listening to ‘On Vanishing land’ and others on Hyperdubs’ Flatline label I immediately realised the almost fictitious imaginative approach that lies with term ‘audio essay’. These works stick to a given baseline topic but explore deeper distracting themes using soundscapes that overpower and undercut the voice. This creates a duality within a piece that no longer explores either academia or storytelling and requires a new concept of attention to absorb both together. This pedagogical approach makes audio essays harder listening than an audio paper or other species of sonic literature which reduces its accessibility as a listener who may only be interested in its surface level theme. The audio essay is also attractive for those reasons as they are a more of an immersive auditory experience which allows a listener to fall in and out of realisation with the baseline theme and explore others that are brought up within the soundscapes or varying vocal tone and topics.
This unit creates an opportunity for me to explore and learn a new topic which I’m most excited for. I personally think now with my new understanding of an audio essay my intentions lie closer towards an audio paper as it will allow me to explore a research topic critically using my favoured academic structuring. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a sound designer or composer it might also be beneficial to push myself towards exploring an audio essay as a way to try new methodology out. There are three main themes I would currently like to explore. Firstly, an investigative journalism approach towards a topic could be interesting for me as I find myself quite interested in this field and have been wanting an opportunity to explore it further. The second is an ecological / natural science exploration of a space or natural process, this could align well within an audio essay as I could introduce sub-themes or ideas using more abstract auditory scapes that contrast the main argument. My last idea would be to do a sonic anthropological exploration of a topic which explores the musicology of sounds and instruments. This could also be interesting in an audio essay as the more fluid creative freedom would allow me to investigate socio-political ideas within the main theme. This unit is exciting for me as it provides a new format to learn and understand as well as giving me the opportunity to explore a new topic which I mentioned earlier. In the meantime until my next blog post, I will investigate my three topic areas closer and explore how they would contextually fit within an audio essay or paper.
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