Sonic Faction: Audio Essay as Medium and Method (Urbanomic / Redactions)

ISBN: 1915103126

Author: Barton, Justin

Condition: New

Explorations of the audio essay as medium and method.With contributors including Justin Barton, Angus Carlyle, Kodwo Eshun, Steve Goodman, Robin Mackay, Paul Nataraj, and Iain Sinclair, Sonic Faction presents extended lines of thought prompted by two Urbanomic events which explored the ways in which sound and voice can produce new sensory terrains and provoke speculative thought.Three recent pieces provide the catalyst for a discussion of the potential of the "audio essay" as medium and method, a machine for intensifying listening and unsettling the boundaries between existing forms: documentary, music, ambient sound, audiobook, field recording, radio play.Kode9s Astro-Darien (2022) is a sonic fiction about simulation, presenting an alternative history of the Scottish Space Programme, haunted by the ghosts of the British Empire. Justin Barton and Mark Fishers On Vanishing Land (2006) is a dreamlike account of a coastal walk that expands into questions of modernity, capitalism, fiction, and the micropolitics of escape. Robin Mackays By the North Sea (2021) is a meditation on time, disappearance, and loss as heard through the fictions of Lovecraft, Ccru, and the spectre of Dunwich, the city that vanished beneath the waves.Alongside photographic documentation of the events and edited transcripts of the artists discussions, Sonic Faction brings together contributors with diverse perspectives to address the question of the audio essay and to imagine its future.ContributorsAngus Carlyle, Paul Nataraj, Iain Sinclair, Robin Mackay, Steve Goodman, Justin Barton, Kodwo Eshun, Shelley Trower