Reading:

Thomas De Quincy’s ‘Macbeth’ essay focusing on the ‘knock on the gates preceding Duncans death.  

Rudolf Arnheim, Radio Essay

Looking at a quote from the De Quincy essay; ‘The reason is that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes.’ This point is interesting because we can do the same with sound. As a listener we uses our ears, our eyes are pretty much redundant when absorbing music or sounds. Through radio, sound or music it’s possible to ‘create the illusion’ and trick our ears into thinking we heard something. From the Arnehiem Radio source it reads; ‘If we can only succeed in producing an acoustically correct aural-impression…then you can suggest what you wish to the listener; he will make the request picture out of it, even to the fourth dimension’. The source argues that situation of listening ultimately compels us to supplement the experience with our own visuals. The listener is urged to imagine with the inner eyes. ‘Radio drama is capable of creating an entire world complete in itself out for the sensory materials at its disposal.’

In relation to the question, focusing on distorting time, this can be achieved through a number of means. One of the most obvious ones to me would be through collage. As Dr Baxter alluded us to the work of Rauschenberg, a similar mismatching of mediums can distort the listener’s perception of time. An array of sounds recorded between a fifty year period can be arranged together in a single composition. If these sounds are recognisable to a particular year/time/event etc the outcome would be a distortion of time, but only if the listener can identify them.   

In response to ‘telescoping time through sound’ I feel this can be achieved by pinpointing a time, place or person, for example Jessica Ekomane’s piece ‘Citizen Band’ does this perfectly. Citizen Band (2019) is an audio radio commission piece that telescopes anonymous conversations between truck drivers and workers in Indiana and Nebraska. In a sense this piece is a good example because in my opinion it distorts, telescopes, stretches and abolish’ time. The piece is comprised of many conversations one after the other, non linear, the time is unknown. Although unknown we do get a sense of place from the speakers, how they sound and what they talk about. In 30mins the concept of the Citizen Band from a particular place in the world is enlarged, stretched through the collection of said conversations thus abolishing a ‘real’ sense of time.