For my first project, I decided to approach the interpretation of death as change; a constantly evolving self that kills off the old to replace the new. Additionally, I had been watching one of my favorite pieces of internet television, Twigger's Holiday, by Rob Schrab, which is a series of entertaining shorts that documents the death of the main character's childhood. I highly reccomend it, it is very well executed.
So, with thoughts of childhood swimming in my head, I opted to approach that aspect of change. It was something I've been thinking a lot about for a while. When did I grow up? How did I get here? It was only yesterday that I was in high school, and a day before that, romping through the woods and playing in the dirt, as young boys tend to do.
Armed with this idea, I decided to create an audio piece where I would multitrack recordings where I would be reading conflicting pieces about life, and about the way things used to be. I couldn't find any of my recording toys anywhere, so I ended up taking a cassette tape recorder, and recording both tracks, which accounts for the poor quality of the sound. Since recording this, I have discovered that the recorder recieves significant amounts of interference if there is nothing covering its built in speaker. The noise on the track sounds like CRT noise, but that actually isn't the case, as I recorded it in the dark, with all nearby lights and monitors and other such devices off in an effort to eliminate the noise. I took the two tracks, digitized them, cut them down for pacing and for juxtaposition, and panned them hard right and hard left. I felt like the middle track was empty, so I inserted a climactic passage from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Yanqui UXO, the track in question was "Motherfucker=Redeemer part 1".
Apart from the poor sound quality, I was generally pleased with the outcome of the project. To me it feels immensely personal, and, in my opinion, the poor sound quality almost aids in lending a more intimate feeling to the piece.