Chris Tonelli - "Joy Preceding Death, 1923"

An extremely important part of what radio art is, is what it is not. Playing off convention radio art is aesthetic guerrilla warfare assaulting and uplifting the both the unexpecting listener and the listener who listens because of the impossibility of knowing what to expect. The technology of radio broadcasting, which itself is the camouflage which triggers the expectation that radio art often aspires to subvert, is inevitably expressed as the artist(s) choose it as their medium. Beyond that, radio art employs an ever-expanding and obscurely and inventively discovered arsenal of technological toys stretching the limits of timbral and harmonic (which for me always implies the prefix a) possibilities while they evolve and expand our desire for complexity.

Though these techno toys are never necessary, as radio art is limitless and need not express any technology but inevitably that required for the broadcast, I have chosen to focus on them in my piece 'Joy Preceding Death, 1923' for two reasons. First, since the course centers around the technology, I felt that the aesthetic possibilities that were unique to the tech should be explored as fully as I could conceive of - as unique. Secondly I appreciate that the timbral, harmonic and rhythmic complexity of much of technological phenomena has the ability to accustomise our aural sense to complexity, thus allowing us to appreciate the musical qualities of an increasingly wide scope of sound.

Through this radio art piece I, as the artist, count myself among those who wish to receive an unexpected experience and have relied on the tech to deliver this. Many of the sonic elements were created in a aesthetic space which humanity cannot can reside without technology. Most of the sonic elements of the piece were altered on a temporal level which conflicts with temporality as we experience it. The stretch feature created the dominant element of the piece: the sound of my voice speaking one fairly random word into the microphone stretched twenty times as long as I would speak it. As the result immediately shocked me, due to the diversity between recognisable timbral elements of my voice and the wealth of astonishing timbres and rhythmic sequences which appeared unexpectedly, I chose to base the piece around both dry and further digitally altered occurrences of it.

The piece grew from interacting copies of that element, for which I also must credit the features of reversing and many digital effects, to include complimentary elements which surrounded the same method. The flute section does not alter timbre significantly but alters the way it is experienced as with the help of 'zero crossings', pitch manipulation and a cut and paste option, all of which can alter on a minute temporal level which a flute player could never function. Pitch can be changed faster than we can follow and the changes and the linearity of sonic events can be transcended. Two of the elements were alterations of the same digitally generated chord, thus truly unique to the program. The cello, though not a radical digitally altered element, I felt was an complementary element as it give me analogous reactions to the voice sample as the timbres produced by the player while I recorded her were equally as shockingly and pleasurably unexpected.

The laugh that ends the piece I felt was appropriate due the unexpected aesthetic pleasure I received from the process, but is also itself a result of the tech without which it never would have been captured and unexpectedly discovered. The driving element behind this section of the course is our interacting with audio production technology, and 'JOy PreCeding Death, 1923' is the end result of technology arousing my aesthetic as well as the expression of that experience.

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