Translating an Academic Text into Sound Art: An Experiment with a Communication Studies' Text on Participation
Abstrakt
This chapter reports on the experimental translation of an academic (written) text into a sound art composition. The starting point of this translation experiment is a 2014 book chapter, entitled The democratic (media) revolution: a parallel genealogy of political and media participation, authored by Nico Carpentier, Peter Dahlgren and Francesca Pasquali.
The outcome of the experiment - the sound composition - is called "Audionces" and can be downloaded at https://soundcloud.com/buskingsounds/audionces. In the current chapter, the production process of Audionces is analysed, firstly by focussing on the roles of the actors.
In a second part, the translation strategies of conceptualisation, selecting sources and ordering sounds are analysed, combining a more theoretical approach with a more practice-based description of the translation process. The last part of this chapter consists of an analysis of the tensions that characterised the translation experiment, and of the ways these tensions were successfully negotiated.
The main aims of this translation are 1) to experiment with alternative (non-textual) ways of communicating academic knowledge, and 2) to gain a better understanding of the opportunities that a sonification process offers to both genres.