Exhausted in Santiago

Santiago protest reimagined by Peter Annear.

"This field recording is full of atmosphere, a great sound collected in a couple of minutes of anthropophonic ear thrashing. Thank you for submitting it. The different layers are well distinguished: The protesting voice – megaphony - which finds melody and rhythm in his intention to conmmunicate The serendipitous sounds – serendipophony - hooters and whistles which accompany the megaphony. The communicative intent is still there but less so The traffic roar – cacophony – which is random, all surrounding with surprises from left and right. These sounds have little communicative intent. Do these layers of sound reflect levels of consciousness too?

Reimagining: 065 “Exhausted in Santiago” Peter Annear Protest is a powerful form of communication, carried out in Mark Baldwin’s recording with passion and determination. I was fascinated by the amount of unintentional opposition he had from the sounds around him. He sounded like a man drowning, almost overwhelmed and sinking in noise. In my reimagining I have tried to give each layer random and focussed moments; moments of survival and moments of death. Just as we look for shape and meaning in clouds and the light and shadow of trees there are moments of connection and disconnection. Small serendipitous sounds have been manipulated to form intentional melodies and rhythms, the voice has been reduced to one single lingering phrase and the cacophony has been given the role of a pedal note. At certain points through the piece these sounds are given a greater or lesser focus. All the sounds you hear have come from the original recording. I used Audacity with its various effects to reimagine these sounds."

Part of the Protest and Politics project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/protest