Month: June 2025

Out of all the guest lectures this term, Paul Nataraj’s stood out to me the most. There was something deeply honest and reflective about the way he spoke—not just about his work, but about the thinking behind it. After the session, we had a great conversation where he shared more about his influences and thought process, which only deepened my appreciation for his practice.

His sound piece Dub in a Cup of Tea really struck a chord with me. I found it to be a powerful example of how collection can itself be a form of creation. The way he layered samples, memories, and textures felt both personal and political, speaking to histories that aren’t always preserved in straightforward ways.

One concept he introduced that has stayed with me is the idea of the palimpsest, something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since. It made me reconsider how I approach my own work, and how sound, memory, and meaning can all exist in layers. I’m looking forward to seeing how this approach will come to fruition.

Devangi Vivrekar’s Persuasive Design Techniques In The Attention Economy has served as an invaluable source of information while researching for this project, I’ like to highlight some quotes that I find to be of particular interest that my not have made their way into my essay.

‘When all apps, even meditation apps that intend to install calm, must compete with social media apps for morning attention, they join what Harris calls the ‘arms race for attention’. This proliferates techniques that ‘race to the bottom of the brainstem’. ~ Devangi Vivrekar, Persuasive Design Techniques In The Attention Economy, page 7

‘The compounding effect of these production higher level cognition can then be extended to impact the very basis of our ‘freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self,’ which demonstrates how these seemingly small design techniques can have large cognitive impacts when interacted with so frequently and intimately.’ ~ Devangi Vivrekar, Persuasive Design Techniques In The Attention Economy, page 9

‘By removing visual cues that indicates how much has been consumed or when to stop consuming, people engage more in activities that are considered mindless.’ ~ Devangi Vivrekar, Persuasive Design Techniques In The Attention Economy, page 12

I’ve found my reading into persuasive design to be really intriguing but haven’t found a way to tie it in with the essay for this project. With that said, I will keep researching over the summer in hopes to tie it in when I have the opportunity to talk about the full scope of the modern digital climate in my final year.

44m 50s is an EP by Cameron Picton that I picked up in Dash The Henge, a record shop in Camberwell, while working on this project. While I was in the store, I had two CDs in hand but wasn’t sure which to go with. After briefly sharing what I was listening to on my way over with the friendly guy behind the counter, he pointed at the at the black paper sleeve with the white scribble on the front and said “Oh yeah! Definitely that one, you’ll love that one! Can’t find that anywhere online.”

Since listening to it on my late night bike ride home, I feel my relationship with music to have changed dramatically—I slipped the disk into my walkman, pressed play and before the end of the first track I knew I was in for something special. The EP plays with the temporality of sound, consisting of one 44 minute and 50 second track within which songs, loops and field recordings blur, ebb and flow between each other. If your favourite track is at 35 minutes, then I hope you like the 34 minutes that come before. I really appreciate this choice as I am have no option but to engage with each of the songs in this piece and as a result my relationship with the project is deeper. I already know that this CD will serve as a invaluable source of inspiration for me going forwards, even in terms of knowing what is possible to achieve outside the streaming framework.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the negative impacts that social media can have on us. I am conscious of how much time I spend of these websites and try to be aware of what I am consuming as much as possible. Although it may seem like I am opposed to social media it is a technology that is an inescapable part of our culture today, so I believe we must be able to reach a balance between mindless consumption or brain rotting and total abstinence from these apps.

There is a large group of people who use social media to share their political beliefs and the things they find important in the name of spreading awareness, but what do these posts do when they don’t translate into real world action and people in places of power can easily avoid or ignore the spreading messages in the sea of other posted content? I’d like to highlight an example of what I believe to be a great use case for social media.

In June of 2020, a group of k-pop fans used platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X to organise and disrupt Donald Trumps re-election campaign. They claimed hundreds of tickets to Trumps Oklahoma rally when they had no intention of attending, inflating expectations for the turn out. They also used their collective efforts to raise $1000000 in funds for movements such as Black Lives Matter—and over 35000 meals for another London charity. K-pop fans have made themselves known for spamming hashtags that oppose important movements like BLM with #AllLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter and #WhiteLivesMatter—ultimately making hateful posts harder to find and weakening the original message.

There’s something quietly powerful about working with materials that have been used before—passed down, worn in, shaped by someone else’s hands. Whether it’s a ripped record sleeve, a cracked cd case, an unnamed floppy disc, or a dusty cassette tape, these objects carry time with them. They hold memories, moments, and meanings that extend beyond our own. And when we work with them, we’re not just recycling—we’re entering into a kind of conversation with the past.

In a world obsessed with the new, it’s easy to forget the value of what’s already here. But choosing to engage with older, inherited, or found materials can slow us down in a necessary way. It allows for a deeper appreciation of process—of working more fully, and connecting more meaningfully to what we’re creating.

There’s a kind of grace in accepting the flaws in something you didn’t choose or curate. A stain, a glitch, a track you don’t particularly like. Instead of skipping over or deleting what doesn’t feel perfect on first reaction, you’re asked to sit with it. To listen. To figure out how to work with it rather than against it. That process builds patience—and sometimes, something richer and more honest emerges as a result.

There’s also something grounding about using the same tools or formats as previous generations. We touch the same surfaces, carry the same books, hear the same analogue hums. In doing so, we reconnect with a physical, imperfect world that resists the hyper-speed of the digital age. We remember that creativity isn’t always clean or immediate. Sometimes it’s slow, uncertain, and shaped by things we can’t fully control.

From these materials, something new can be born—something that holds the past and present at once. A remix, a collage, a sculpture, a track layered with samples and noise. Creating from passed-down objects isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about continuity. About honouring what came before while reshaping it into something meaningful now.

The title of my sound piece is Wax Heart, it gains its name from noticing a ‘beating’ from the loop once one side of a vinyl has finished. During this project I have been spending a lot of time with physical forms of music and have found my connection to the sounds and music I surround myself with to have deepened greatly and I wanted to capture the ‘soul’ that vinyl in particular seems to possess. As I made my way through my collection, I noticed each side had its own distinct sound and crackle that looped once the music had stopped playing. This I find to be akin to the heart of the record.

Inspired in part by Paul Nataraj’s ‘dub in a cup of tea’, the idea of ‘palimpsest’, which he introduced to me during his guest lecture, and the idea of listening beyond the obvious, what composer Pierre Schaeffer called reduced listening, has deeply influenced my approach. I’ve tried to hear not just the melody or message of a track, but the textures that surround it: the residual, the ambient, the overlooked. In this sense, Wax Heart became less about music in the traditional sense, and more about presence—about what remains after the music has stopped. I have been thinking about collection as a form of creation and how we can give sounds new meaning once removed from their original contexts.

Ultimately, this work is about listening in ways that resist speed, perfection, and disposability. It’s about allowing the materiality of sound to guide meaning, rather than imposing it. By returning to physical formats and embracing their limitations, I’ve found not only a deeper connection to the music itself, but to time, memory, and care.