audio as play:
personal storytelling, soundscapes, audio just because.
field guides: in transit
a concept album for the 1 line of the seattle light rail.
Field Guides is an ongoing collaboration between Leah Crosby, myself, and Hannah Simmons, as well as a variety of community partners. Together, we create site-specific, highly soundscaped audio experiences that encourage reimaginings of body and place. Oftentimes, these sonic experiences are supplemented by small zines or other physical ephemera.
This project is made up entirely of field recordings from on, in and around the light rail recorded during a one-day period. Listening to music or a podcast on headphones is a common transit experience, but rarely a connective one. The sonic landscape we created asks listeners to tune into their surroundings rather than tune them out. Inside this face-paced, social media obsessed, capitalist hellscape, collective, mindful, deep listening is radical. Paying attention can be uncomfortable. We’re excited about the experience of sitting with that discomfort long enough to see what else can come up.
sound offerings 2020
I started this project in March 2020 during the early days of the pandemic. I shared these pieces as an offering to my friends across the country, all of us under some form of lockdown. Each piece was a chance to use my own archival tape, record through my open window or take a long walk through DC and just listen.
Spring thunder. Listen here.
Moon river. Listen here.
Knowledge like the stars. Listen here.
Evening howl. Listen here.
For KCRW’s 2020 Radio Race prompt “Time Warp,” I joined Brittany Cronin, Adelina Lancianese and James Sneed to create our entry:
Future Testimony: Two Afrofuturists imagine a world that centers Black joy.
audio playground
Audio Playground is a semi-regular audio assignment delivered via newsletter by producer, editor and teacher Sarah Geis. Here’s a collection of the “audio doodles” I’ve produced in response:
Prompt: Create an audio hug, 1-minute or less. Listen here.
Prompt: Make a 1-minute story in the form of a list. This piece was made in collaboration with fellow Audio Playground-er Phil Smith. Listen here.
Prompt: Recreate a favorite scent in sound (30-60 seconds). Listen here.
Prompt: Remix a voicemail you’ve received (ask permission!). Or: tell a 90-second or less story in the form of a voicemail. Listen here.
Prompt: Send a minute of what it sounds like where you are. Listen here.
never meet your heroes
The first audio piece I produced, which I’ve kept up mostly as an act of personal archiving. It’s a story I still love.
About a year before my grandpa's death, I had lunch with him and a tape recorder. "Never Meet Your Heroes" is one of the stories that emerged: A boy, an island off the coast of Alaska and the man best known as Tarzan.
Music by Niklas Paschburg. The track is 'Sand Whirling,' from the album Oceanic.
You can learn more about the Unangax (Aleut) whose homes on Attu were taken from them during WWII in Nick Golodoff’s memoir Attu Boy, and read an excerpt here.