Week 6 Forum - Vicki Bennett's Chunky Sample Sound Works

This week David introduced us to the sound collage radio shows of Vicki Bennett. We listened to some of her work and then heard about her ideology. We then watched a film by David Harris while concurrently listening to another of Bennett's radio shows. David explained that the video was not intentionally synchronized to the sound work at all however it was interesting that there seemed to be strong connections.

During the usual philosophical after-party, Stephen raised the question of whether the practice of "recycling" music to create new works is becoming more prevalent and whether there is a separation between "creators" and "recyclers". As was suggested, music has always been recycled in various ways eg the medieval motet which uses pre-existing chants. I think that there is no clear separation between new and recycled music because all music is influenced by other music and takes some elements from pre-existing works. I think that Vicki has a characteristic (and idiosyncratic) way of using modern technology to recycle and the unique methods and results make her work original. Though some fret that her work is not time consuming to create, neither is improvised jazz or bird-song and they are both rad and legit.

Reference: David Harris. "Week 6 Music Technology Forum - People Like Us". Lecture presented at Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 10 April 2008