(Warning: this piece contains sensitive material and may not be appropriate for all audiences, play at your discretion).
I listened to hours of 911 emergency calls online, most of them through televised media, re-recording all of them in Garage Band. This was difficult at first; I could only do 15 minutes when I started. Sometimes after hearing an especially disturbing call, I would have to stop for days or weeks. My threshold increased so that I could listen to 4-6 hours of emergency calls in one sitting.
Then, I eliminated the intelligible speech. The intermittent sounds were strung together into sparse phrasings and chords, respecting a certain chronological integrity. This ongoing piece is structured like a palindrome. The sound processing does not rid the heard material of its difficult, voyeuristic qualities but does seem to evoke a different range of human experience that is not obtainable in the commodified original. Below is an excerpt.
(c) Lizzy De Vita blah blah — Please just don’t steal my shit, ok?! Or email me if you’re not sure about something….