The construction of community within the context of this research grounds the work in a specific time, place and network of relations. The ethnographic approach adopted involves both participant observation as well as semi-structured interviews. The creative audio aspect of our undertaking has also allowed for non-verbal explorations of themes raised in our study. These three elements (community, ethnography and audio-creation) have been granted equal weight within the context of the research. The fourth and final axis of inquiry explored in this case is theoretical. Sampling on the part of sound producers in 2007 has burgeoned to the point where the term "sample" is now hard to distinguish from "record." This state of affairs was hardly predicted in the literature. A comparative discussion of academic analyses of sampling, both old and new, is the subject of Chapter 3 of this dissertation. "Sampling as recording" is considered in Chapter 5, along with sampling's relationship to 6 other keywords derived from the interviews with the Selected Sounds participants (i.e., technology, community, memory, listening, collecting, and ethics).
The current chapter explores the theory and context behind the methodological choices made within Selected Sounds--choices stemming from a commitment to a reflexive form of ethnography that invokes sample-based practices of citation, friendship and creative production as mechanisms for highly-engaged research in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
We see the term as referring primarily to a particular method or set of methods. In its most characteristic form it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people's daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions--in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995, 1)
Selected Sounds uses methods of qualitative inquiry such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews in developing its account of sample-based music. However, my role as ethnographer in this study differs significantly from the kind of intervention traditionally practiced by those taking up such a moniker.
The method of participant observation is a way to collect data in naturalistic settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the common and uncommon activities of the people being studied. (Dewalt 2002, 2)
As a participant in the remixing integral to Selected Sounds, I have been listening to others and myself at the same time. "Record" of what I see/hear and experience was kept through notes and interview recordings. Attempting to make myself "explicitly aware of things that others take for granted" in their sample-based practices (myself included) has been one the main focuses of the project (Spradley 1980, 58). But fundamentally what I have tried to animate has been the pursuit of our collective goal--the sample-based compilation CD. The experimental/collective approach in this case has more in common with forms of narrative exchange among friends than explicit qualitative systems of data collection, arrangement and conclusion (such as those found in Crabtree 1992). This non-traditional approach to ethnography finds its justification in recent developments within the field, developments loosely definable as "postmodern."
The postmodern sensitivity against subject-centered accounts of social phenomena has had a great impact on the state of ethnography today.
Ethnography is often said to be a way of "telling it like it is", looking at the social world of the subject as it is seen "from the inside," telling stories as people might tell these stories themselves. But immediately, it is not (and never can be) that. This is a simplified view of the relations between subject-object, self and other. (Pearson 1993, vii)
For an ethnographer's account to be truly "from the inside", this would require the ability to "go native"--an impossible scenario. For the very act of observing or listening for the purpose of writing sets the ethnographer apart from his or her cohort. The suggestion that one could be so well integrated into a community as to go unnoticed in record keeping (thereby providing the ethnographer with an "objective" point of view) obfuscates the locus of ethnography's greatest strength--namely its relaxed, conversational approach towards engaging with the common sense of a person or people. By "common sense" I am referring to the sort of tactical, everyday knowledge taken for granted by different communities of people, the sharing of which constitutes their unity. This naturalist (as opposed to positivist) foundation of much ethnographic inquiry accepts that the way to get closer to discovering social truths is to get closer to the people and contexts that develop those truths in their day to day activities. However, as Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson have claimed, "any hope of discovering 'laws' of human behaviour is misplaced--since human behaviour is continually constructed, and reconstructed, on the basis of people's interpretations of the situations they are in (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995, 8).
Ethnographic research today cannot naively insist that the social facts it uncovers are absolute. This revised model of qualitative inquiry accepts that variation will always displace universality. However, there is a tension here "between the naturalism characteristic of ethnographers' methodological thinking and the constructivism and cultural relativism that shape their understanding of the perspectives and behaviour of the people they study" (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995, 11 my emphasis). By insisting on moving into the social world of the people they observe, ethnographers betray their subscription to the notion that there is something "out there" to study--the "object" of ethnographic inquiry. This belief is made problematic, however, by the commonly held impossibility of truly "going native." Moreover, many ethnographers go further in recognizing their own role in the construction of the social world that they (and others who come after them) seek to interpret. The very selection of a field or object of study itself brings certain questions to the fore and eliminates others, or at least puts them on the back burner.
The 'field' is not an entity 'out there' that awaits the discovery and exploration of the intrepid explorer. The field is not merely reported in the texts of fieldwork: it is constituted by our writing and reading. I do not mean that there are no social beings or social acts independent of our observations. Clearly there are. Rather, my view is that 'the field' of fieldwork is the outcome of a series of transactions. (Atkinson 1992, 8)
These transactions negotiate the field's boundaries: what is omitted, who are overlooked, how is the ethnographer herself to be represented, what is the perceived reason why she is there, and what themes or issues are highlighted? They occur at many levels--simply by arriving with questions in hand, the ethnographer disturbs the "natural" state of the community he wishes to study. Furthermore, the ethnographer's efforts at inscription and interpretation (research, recording, writing) are bound to feed-back into these communities, causing new reactions and behaviours to appear.
A variety of new ethnographic techniques have arisen over the years in order to help resolve this tension between naturalistic tendencies and constructivist postures. For the purposes of concision and brevity, I will now outline three ethnographic strategies adopted within Selected Sounds: 1. the writing of a self-reflexive, narrative based ethnographic text, 2. the presentation of textual quotation as a sample-based endeavour, and 3. the promotion of friendship as a working methodology. While hardly exhaustive, the articulation of these three positions should be read as foundational to my construction of a creative research community/context through ethnography.
If ethnography is not "telling it like it is," then why do we value it? According to postmodern, feminist, and queer theoretical accounts of ethnography, we value ethnographers for the same reasons we value story tellers--narrative provides the means for the expression of articulated, contextualized truths--partial, and yet illustrative, nevertheless. On this point, Ruth Behar has quoted Walter Benjamin, who claimed that storytelling
is "always the art of repeating stories," without explanation, combining the extraordinary and the ordinary; most important, it is grounded in a community of listeners on whom the story makes a claim to be remembered by virtue of its "chaste compactness," which inspires the listener, in turn, to become the teller of the story. (Behar 1995, 152)
The task at the heart of ethnography has always been a mediation between distance and authority (Pearson 1993, xi). The impossibility of a completely authentic account (going native) forces the negotiation of a double distance on the part of the would-be ethnographic writer; links must be made to both the community she is studying as well as the audience (academic or otherwise) she is trying to reach with her new-found knowledge. Narrative techniques are used to create these links--to tell these stories.
A deeply self-reflexive text provides a means to develop this authority as a story teller without resorting to the promotion of a naïve faith in the ethnographer as neutral scribe. (Behar 1995, 152), (Denzin 1997, 217), (Pearson 1993, xii) For Behar, Denzin and others, the ethnographer is a teller of tales. Sometimes these tales are learned through first hand observation, other times through interviews--but in all cases the writing of these tales is partial, subjective, constructed, arbitrary and far from complete. Nevertheless, what is produced still interests us.
Denzin describes "self-reflexive" ethnographies as "messy texts":
texts that are aware of their own narrative apparatuses, that are sensitive to how reality is socially constructed, and that understand that writing is a way of "framing" reality. Messy texts are many sited, inter-textual, always open ended, and resistant to theoretical holism, but always committed to cultural criticism.(Denzin 1997, 224)
Denzin outlines a variety of modes for the writing of messy ethnographic texts, including the narrative, poetic, autobiographical and performative. Ethnographies that draw upon these various modes operate from an understanding that the construction and communication of knowledge is not a linear affair and that truths, once expressed, are always partial. This postmodern sensitivity, although relativist, does not demand that texts developed according to its parameters be uncritical. On the contrary, what is required is simply a willingness to be open about where one is coming from as a researcher--thus allowing potential readers access to how your memory and critical thinking may have been operating during various moments of interview or observation. Later, as pen is put to paper, experiences encountered in interviews or through first-hand observation are once again filtered through memory in this process of re-narration. A self-reflexive text is conscious of this versioning--this is made explicit throughout the text. Many recent models of ethnographic writing seek to place different pieces into juxtaposition. Sometimes these pieces come from interviews, other times from the ethnographer's own past. This act of articulation is reminiscent of sample-based music. It involves both interpretation and reflection.
Interpretation comes to the forefront of the research work. This calls for the utmost awareness of theoretical assumptions, the importance of language and pre-understanding, all of which constitute major determinants of the interpretation. The second element, reflection, turns attention 'inwards' towards the person of the researcher, the relevant research community, society as a whole, intellectual and cultural traditions, and the central importance, as well as problematic nature, of language and narrative (the form of presentation) in the research context. Systematic reflection of several different levels can endow the interpretation with a quality that makes empirical research of value. Reflection can, in the context of empirical research, be defined as the interpretation of interpretation and the launching of critical self-exploration of one's own interpretations of empirical material (including its construction). (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000, 5-6)
Alvesson and Sköldberg go on to articulate four elements of reflective research that stem from four different philosophical currents: 1. grounded theory, 2. hermeneutics, 3. critical theory and 4. postmodernism. The four principles for reflexive research that flow from these schools: 1. systematic techniques in research procedures, 2. clarification of the primacy of interpretation, 3. awareness of the political-ideological character of research and 4. reflection in relation to the problem of representation and authority (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000, 5-6). Without going into a description of these four principles (which is beyond the scope of this chapter), I would like nevertheless to take a few minutes to explore the relationship of my doctoral research to this reflexive ideology. First of all, I was fascinated to learn that Alvesson and Sköldberg come from a philosophy of science background, something which I share with the authors. Perhaps this is why I find their approach appealing, if somewhat self-righteous. In extracting insights from the above mentioned schools of thoughts, Alvesson and Sköldberg can't help but take pot-shots along the way, including describing as "troublemakers" those post-structuralists, linguistic philosophers, discourse analysts and feminists who disagree with their stubborn insistence that empirical research is of value (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000, 3). Nevertheless, I find myself in basic agreement with many of their statements, especially the claim that transparency in interpretation and reflection are paramount in the construction of "valuable" research. The basic point of view is that research into human behaviour (they focus principally on the social sciences, although equivalent arguments have been developed for the physical sciences) can never result in the construction of objective "facts" due to a host of reasons, including the primacy of our interpretative capacity, which makes it impossible for us to articulate an observation or to extract data from an interview transcript without remixing the material in the process. As opposed to throwing our hands in the air and claiming that research is then pointless, since no facts are ever unquestionable (or asserting in an equivalent, but opposite sort of way, that every point of view is as true as the next)--Alvesson and Sköldberg prefer to work towards developing an ethics for research in the social sciences, one which attempts to make room for all the important considerations brought up by theorists and cultural analysts over the past hundred years without "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".
The kernel of this ethics lies in the concept of "reflexivity" or "self-reflection". The concept applies to authors of empirical research in the social sciences as much as it does their audience and subjects of study. Transparency in terms of one's assumptions, vocabularies, systems of classification, hypotheses, relationships and theoretical baggage is the only way to produce a text that is ready for others to embrace into their own remixes as "knowledge." Such transparency enhances "modularity", to borrow from (Manovich 2005). Modular texts are texts that are designed so as to enhance their "remixability" into other projects, other contexts. If one's (research, social, personal, etc.) intentions can be articulated and built into the materials one produces as a researcher or creator, this makes it easier for others to later interpret, work with, and ultimately "evolve" this work. Reflexive audiences pick up on purposeful indicators, and will interpret them according to their own set of preconceptions. It's about preparing academic work so that others can digest it in meaningful and personalized ways.
Perhaps most importantly, however, a reflexive methodology is about power, and recognizing that the construction of "knowledge" is often complicit in the construction of an "us" and a "them"--i.e., those that "know" and those that do not. The only way to produce "knowledge" worthy of the name is to be as transparent as possible about where it came from. This does not simply mean publishing an article in a scientific journal and then walking away. Knowledge must be useable within a variety of social planes in order to adhere enough to everyday reality to be considered true. Communication is the key, and a constant re-analysis of one's position as a purveyor of knowledge, with the ambition of sharing that knowledge with as many people as possible, provides a way out of the pitfalls of ivory-tower elitism as well as the hoarding of social capital.
Reflexivity is about acknowledging the power of the reader/audience. For by accepting that all observation, writing, production, etc., is created through interpretation, one recognizes the potential active engagement of a reader. In terms of a text, it is always
open to different interpretations. In the perspective of postmodernist ideals, authorship is about increasing the opportunities for different readings. The reader becomes significant, not as a consumer of correct results - the right intended meaning from the text and its author(ity) - but in a more active and less predictable position, in which interesting readings may be divorced from the possible intentions of the author. The key concepts and catchwords here include multiple voices, pluralism, multiple reality and ambiguity. The good research text should avoid closure, following a monolithic logic. Instead, inconsistencies, fragmentation, irony, self-reflection and pluralism must pervade the work - writing of the final text as well as the thinking and note-taking that precede it. (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000, 171)
Inconsistencies, fragmentation, etc., can be distracting for a reader. But this is precisely why they are of value, as they open up possibilities for mental journeys and tangents, the very substance of interpretation. Chapter 4 of this dissertation, where I present the results of the Selected Sounds interviews, obviously adheres to this "messy text" model, but it is my hope that the entire work resonates with destabilizing, pluralist self-reflection.
De Certeau writes:
Incised into the prose of the passage from day to day, without any possible commentary or translation, the poetic sounds of quoted fragments remain. (de Certeau 1984, 162)
De Certeau understands the practice of quoting "the words of others" as an attempt to recover "voices of the body"--the oral/aural events which occur, for example, in conversations, at specific historical moments and which disappear as soon as they take place. The contexts of these events are imprinted into the quotations one takes the time to record and subsequently introduce into new oral and/or textual discussions. It is in this sense of borrowing or lifting that quotation is reminiscent of sampling in music.
An aural space must be made for these voices. Quoting others treats their words like samples. The fragments we select are used to enhance our own texts, our own articulated contexts, with les mots justes de l'autre. These acts of appropriation are an attempt to recover the poetry of an original utterance through cutting and mixing. The quote is snipped from its original context and then framed by the rest of one's analysis so as to suggest that this original context has somehow been translated into the new text. Fragments of narrative are treated as having no vital link with their moments of "birth"--re-articulating them in different ways only makes their poetic sparks shine more brightly--illuminating our own interpretive prose which connects each quote to the next. On the first page of the endnote section of his work More Brilliant than the Sun, author Kodwo Eshun tells us that "books sampled are cited by author and date"(Eshun 1998, b[195]).
I'm not the first to suggest that sampling is similar to writing (see Miller 2004, for instance). But the point could use elaboration, at least in terms of how I have come to understand their similarity. There is also at least one very important difference between the two practices. Textual-quotation has a long-standing history and a widely accepted mechanism for paying tribute to the authors one choses to cite--i.e., bibliographic referencing. While plagiarism is obviously not okay, no one can stop me from citing another's work as long as I am prepared to provide a reference as to the original source. The publication of any academic paper, let alone a book, would quickly become prohibitive if one had to pay every time another author's work was referenced. Audio sampling has not been afforded this liberty, in part due to unresolved questions over what constitutes plagiarism in the context of sample-based music. This theme is taken up again in Chapter 3. For the time being I will finish this section on sampling-as-citation with a quote.
[T]he life historian/author usually settles for a segregated, often jarring combination of three [voices]: the native voice, the personal "I was there" voice, and the authoritative voice of the ethnographer. The difficulties inherent in making music out of these three "voices" pose the key challenge. (Behar 1995, 149)
The idea of making music out of one's own voice and the voices of others is here presented as a metaphorical concept applied to the writing of literary texts. Selected Sounds is an attempt to continue on in this spirit of polyphony. Aural quotations were chosen by each participant before we embarked on separate remixing projects. The final compilation CD brings us back together once again, as do the interviews collected in Chapter 4 of this dissertation and the subsequent themes discussed in the concluding chapter (Chapter 5). Before I get to this original research, however, I will continue in my attempt to weave theoretical music from the thoughts of others, notably in Chapter 3's literature review as well as the following sections on friendship as a working methodology for ethnography and research-creation.
[T]he concept of the CD itself should never be assumed a priori, since it may vary from being an aesthetic object to being a documentation of social processes of several types. (Diamond 2005, 134)
It was in recognition of the value of reflexive, heterogeneous accounts of socio-cultural phenomena that I invited other sample-based musicians into my project as composer/collaborators. The question remains, however, as to how and why I ended up choosing the participants I did. The notion of having seven participants came about fairly haphazardly upon reflection as to how many tracks would work well on a compilation CD, as well as in relation to my ability to put aside time, energy and resources for each participant. Twelve+ artists were invited, in the end only seven (eight including the duo) agreed to participate. It turns out to have been an interesting number to choose, given that "6-8 data sources or sampling units will often suffice for a homogenous sample, while 12-20 commonly are needed when looking for dis-confirming evidence or trying to achieve maximum variation" in qualitative research design (Kuzel 1992, 41). Selected Sounds does not attempt to demonstrate anything particularly homogeneous about sample-based composers in general; nor have I sought to provide confirming or dis-confirming evidence of any practices in particular. Instead we have developed a mix of aural/oral narratives about sample-based music, collecting recordings, favourite technologies and our own life histories.
But why these seven and not seven others? There is a short and a long answer to this question. Short answer: because they are all serious sound artists from a variety of different styles and backgrounds, and they are people who I know personally, having met them through our common compositional interests.
The long answer involves a certain amount of personal opinion, practical instinct and theoretical commitment. As a scholar I am not interested in writing the kind of ethnographic work that relies on quoted passages from certain "key" informants that are contextualized so as to represent fountains of untainted, straight-from-the-source wisdom (also discussed in the section on "Ephemerality and the Population of Sound Studies" in Chapter 3). The participants in Selected Sounds were all spontaneously interested in the idea of working with other Montreal artists and their chosen samples once the opportunity was presented to them. The list came together progressively, starting with close friends and former musical-collaborators like Anna Friz and Richard Williams, and then growing to include people they or I suggested, but always with an ear towards achieving a balance of approaches and compositional styles. It was also important to me to try to achieve a 50/50 split between male and female sample-based composers, as so much work already done on such artists has focused on male musicians and their achievements.
Fundamentally, though, I have been guided by the notion that friendships make up the best resource network out of which to put together such investigations. Working together on the project will hopefully spin-off into future collaborations for many of the participants, thereby building and strengthening the community of sample-based producers as it already exists in Montreal. Exposing each other to new techniques, resources and ideas will also serve towards expanding each individual's own repertoire of practices. The distribution opportunity for each participant, as contributors to the compilation album, also constitutes another way in which Selected Sounds will attempt to give back to its research group.
Lisa Tillmann-Healy's concept of "friendship as method" argues that some of the best techniques available to ethnographers seeking to work with their informant-group in a way that promotes mutual gain and respect are those we use in maintaining friendships.
Calling for inquiry that is open, multi-voiced, and emotionally rich, friendship as method involves the practices, the pace, the contexts, and the ethics of friendship. Researching with the practices of friendship means that although we employ traditional forms of data gathering (e.g., participant observation, systematic note taking, and informal and formal interviewing), our primary procedures are those we use to build and sustain friendship: conversation, everyday involvement, compassion, giving, and vulnerability. (Tillmann-Healy 2003, 734)
The introduction of note taking and interview recording into the pre-existing friendships I already have with many of the participants in Selected Sounds was pursued in the spirit of sharing advocated above. In so doing, the desire was to "move from studying 'them' to studying us."(Tillmann-Healy 2003, 735)
The ethics, methods and outcomes of constructing communities for research purposes have also been explored in essays such as Diamond and Moisala (2000), McCartney (2000) and Pegley and Caputo (1994). The quote from Diamond at the start of this section points towards the underlying "insight" at work within such research: that the production of knowledge/texts/records involves a process. What is produced therefore represents this process as much, if not more, than the layers of meaning apparent upon first encounter with the "finished" product.
Friendship as method highlights the possibilities for exchange, engagement and new creative learning that happen when groups of people are "united" under the umbrella of a single research project. In the opening paragraphs of Music and Gender, Diamond and Moisala describe the process through which the book was developed. The "circulation of a set of questions inviting the contributors to share stories about their personal and professional perspectives, as well as opinions, theories, or reflections on the themes for the individual sections of the anthology" (Diamond and Moisala 2000, 4) led to a lively email conversation amongst 16+ women, spanning many different languages, countries and musical traditions. These conversations were subsequently developed into quotations and concepts explored in the rest of the introduction as well as other editorial sections of the book. Diamond and Moisala maintain that this conversation guaranteed, in some ways, the relevance of the public/private conversations addressed through its release (Diamond and Moisala 2000, 5).
Drawing on "reception theory" advocated by pedagogical theorist Paulo Freire, combined with a deep respect for her research subjects derived from feminist studies of philosophy of science (such as the work of Evelyn Fox Keller and Barbara McClintock), McCartney has also contributed to an emergent discussion around friendship as a research methodology. Her consistent and active efforts to bring sonically-minded people together in the development of her research projects can be evidenced through the links available at http://andrasound.org. For an in-depth theoretical discussion of the benefits of dialogue within a constructed research community, see McCartney (2000). For a recent compilation of essays developed in the context of In and Out of the Sound Studio (a research project on the practices of women sound producers in the studio spearheaded by McCartney), see Volume 26, Issue 2 of Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music.
Finally, Pegley and Caputo (1994) provides a useful point of departure in questioning why women sound producers, researchers and writers on ethnographic methodology are less reluctant to develop "friendships" with research subjects and/or to actively construct connections between those brought together in research/recording projects. It also represents a fabulous precedent for the non-traditional presentation of textual information employed in Chapter 4 of this dissertation. Font and text placement are played with in order to foreground the multiplicity of the opinions invoked in the article. Questions of gender, voice, trust, authority and perspective are asked in relationship to the canons of both musicology and feminism. Asserting a tacitly assumed "male ear" in much musicological critique and theory, Pegley and Caputo are intrigued by the notion of a "female" ear,
that is itself pluralistic. It is the apparent singularity and homogeneity by which the consumption of musical sound and musical experiences within a context of power relations has been articulated that underlies our concerns. (Pegley and Caputo 1994, 299-300)
Pegley and Caputo interview themselves as Informant A and Informant B of their study and develop third person accounts of information gleaned in these interviews. The work stands as a well organized, yet wonderfully messy method for the development of participant observation-based ethnographies focused on shared, yet extremely heterogeneous experiences of cultural prejudice such as sexism within the study of music. The singularity of their own responses to such sexism has an inverse relationship to the widespread applicability of the concepts they raise in discussing their own experiences. Personal details are revealed in writing so that "family resemblances" with one's own experience can be more easily recognized. The "female ear" is not afraid to listen to the stories of a single individual, finding the process of hearing that tale infinitely more valuable than being told "how things are" in a general way by an authoritative voice. There is no such thing as a homogeneous musical experience, female or male. But this does not mean that we should not exchange stories.1
Feminist literature on technology, music and ethnography has been instrumental in legitimizing avenues for the production of knowledge that do not reinforce distances between researcher and researched. This is not to suggest that feminist scholarship seeks to subsume difference, quite the contrary. Difference is welcomed with interest and conversational enthusiasm. The methods adopted in Selected Sounds have been greatly affected by these considerations. This cannot be understated. From the initial invitation process, to the cooperative sample-selection mechanism, the semi-structured interviews and the html presentation format opted for in Chapter 4, this research project has sought to respect the aversion to a priori assumptions exemplified by so many feminist writers on sound, technology and society.
As a final point of methodological reflection, the non-traditional format of this dissertation deserves consideration. To be clear, I understand the results of this thesis research to diverge from traditional PhD dissertations in the following three ways.
I am fascinated with the affective dimension of time-based forms of communication such as sound and interactive multimedia (or intermedia). My creative production (both within and outside this project) explores mnemonic responses to such media on the part of both audiences and producers. "Listening" to music, for instance, represents an enormously complex process incorporating emotive, sensorial and intellectual judgments. Acoustics of a listening space and/or quality of a playback system dramatically affect reception of music on the part of the listener. The perceived "value" of a given piece in terms of cultural capital also plays a strong role. However, it is in the realm of memory that audio art exerts its strongest influence. We experience what we hear in constant relation to what we have heard before.
Performance is an integral component of my artistic practice as it allows for the construction of affective feedback loops between audiences, spaces and collaborators. Digital projection, physical/theatrical/instrumental interpretation, scratch djing as well as live audio sampling and remixing are all part of my repertoire. I also create stand-alone sound and intermedia work through the use of a portable digital studio, the Internet, field recordings, photographs, as well as many "antiquated" technologies such as vinyl records, vintage electronics and other "lost" media found in thrift shops.
I am deeply committed to interweaving this artistic practice with my academic research and pedagogical pursuits. My approach in working on theory is the same as my methodology for creating projects--i.e., sample-based. In all my work I attempt to leave ample room for the participation of my selected samples when it comes to guiding the writing/mixing process. The paths I follow in these "mixplorations" almost always flow from a desire to bring the multiple media, electronic devices and software applications I use into some sort of relationship with my everyday life. The theoretical questioning involved in this process is often quite complex. Practical applications, however, can be as simple as mixing field recordings from my environment into sound pieces intended for other people’s car interiors, concert halls, iPods and/or living rooms.
Research-creation in the humanities celebrates the inter-relationship between media, communication and technology. Communication is a type of craft--a grounding of theory through putting it into practice. This can be a soundtrack to a piece of documentary film as much as a face-to-face conversation. In both cases vibrating air molecules are being used as a medium for the transmission of ideas, thoughts and/or feelings from one person to another. Abstract concepts are made concrete, if only for a fleeting instance, as sounds are subsequently taken up by their audience and transformed into words, thoughts, feelings and memories. Sound is a subtle, powerful medium, and often-times overlooked especially when compared to film and its relationship to culture (see Walter Benjamin 1969b). The first step to becoming proficient at recording and mixing sound is to open one's ears, and start remembering the impact sound has on our lives. This often requires a re-tuning of the ear to pay attention to sounds we have learned to filter out of our everyday sonic environments. The Selected Sounds CD and the interactive html version of this dissertation are both intended as devices to help with this retuning.
Research-creation is an emergent field within the humanities, but one which is achieving greater degrees of acceptance. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada define a program of research-creation as:
a sustained research enterprise that includes one or more projects or other components, and which is shaped by broad objectives for the advancement of knowledge in the fine arts, through the development or renewal of the field of artistic endeavour concerned.(http://www.sshrc.ca/web/apply/program_descriptions/fine_arts_e.asp)
This statement is extremely broad. But it does point to the necessity of a project for research-creation. The importance of this point should not be underestimated. What is significant about research-creation is precisely the fact that questions posed within its arena cannot be considered through text-based means alone. In the case of Selected Sounds, my ambition has been to explore questions of practice that could only be asked aurally. To ask "What is sampling?" in face to face conversations can provide one series of answers. Asking participants to help prepare and engage in an aural investigation of audio sampling has provided a very different series of responses. And producing a non-linear dissertation chapter out of these various answers (Chapter 4), as well as a hypertextual academic context for this chapter and the project as a whole (Chapters 1,2,3 and 5) has provided (hopefully) a potential model for the enhanced-textual presentation and dissemination of multi-narrative ethnographic knowledge.