The children's festival

May 13, 2023, 07:05 AM

"The lingering sound of an event that one has missed. The manufactured memory of a person who has, in fact, failed to experience the performance at all. The text, spoken for me by Pham Jatabut, reads:

I fought traffic for over an hour to get there
how was I supposed to know that there would be construction?

when I finally arrived it had ended

all that was left was the debris of discarded food containers
paper programs plastered in the wet gutter
and the occasional kid trailing behind their parents on the way to the bus

very disappointing

I was interested in the blend of music and voices in this recording, particularly the captured moments of adults and children. All of the other sounds in the work are either from the field recording or are synthesized tones triggered by the pitches in the festival music."

Performance at a Thai night market reimagined by John Roach.

calflier001, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons