On Re-Familiarising

Out of the choice between people or places, (with regards to the subject matter of my individual composition) I pondered, for a moment, and then felt wholly and completely drawn to people. To voices, perhaps, and to how distinct and unique each voice appears. We get to know certain voices very well and can easily identify them, even when those individuals are attempting to mask their voice, from a very early age.

This seemed curious to me, an evolutionary sensitivity to the vocal range of audio, our ability to detect the slightest change within that band; so I decided to probe the matter some more. I soon came upon the idea of memory; the memory of voices, and then came the realisation that memory is an imperfect medium of recording. When you are reconnecting with someone they might not be exactly how you remember, because your memories can degrade and alter over time, sometimes leading to the formation of completely new (false) memories, or of distorted half-truths. I wanted to illustrate this disconnect between memory and reality, with recordings of my own voice or those of people around me with whom I am familiar.

Morphing these sounds over time would allow me to mask some features and accentuate others, smearing and smudging until the final voice recordings are unrecognisable or alien when compared to the source audio. This seemed a good thread to tug at, so it stuck around.

// made from writings on paper from roughly 3 weeks ago //

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