At the risk of saying too much about the ‘intent’ of this piece (something I usually steer clear of), I feel as though explaining a bit about how it was constructed might enhance the listening. As a production project for a class in ‘Audio Experiments,’ I tried to find screams that were as “authentic” as possible – some of my sources were CVR (cockpit voice recorders) from plane crashes, phone calls from WTC on 911, and sounds from the Haiti earthquake aftermath to name a few. In other words, screams as media that were never meant to be media, the most unwilling participants in art you’ll ever find. Pulling these together and listening to each one was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever worked on – just completely draining emotionally.
There is one scream of my own, made by taping a homemade piezo transducer mic to my throat and screaming into my pillow. The scream was 4 seconds long, but I time-remapped it to 5 minutes, the length of the piece. Then I remapped the other screams at various lengths and used these to form the backbone of the “symphony” – the underlying rhythm and melody – trying to layer them in a way that was eerily musical. Other layers were then added, including many of the screams heard at their original speed.
WARNING: Some have found the content of this piece disturbing. Proceed at your own risk.
Listen with a good set of headphones if at all possible: [Runtime: 5:00]
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