Daniil Nebolsin

Let's start with a small list of activities:

 - buying up old answering machines on online marketplaces that still have messages from previous owners;

 - searching for and recording "strange" radio signals for a long time;

 - surfing video platforms and cutting out sounds from obscure and sometimes random videos;

 - using unidentifiable speech in music;

- rummage through flea markets and family archives to find old tapes of everyday recordings;

 - make chaotic field recordings without a project or monitoring;

 - search for EVP (electronic voice phenomena, which are voice-like sounds in technical noise);

 - slow down and distort random and "anonymized" music beyond recognition using techniques with unpredictable results;

 - finally, to record your music in a way that makes it sound like a forensic clue or a battered artifact of unknown origin. 

 All of these practices are part of modern music production, and they can be found in both small-circulation and experimental releases, as well as in popular releases. The aesthetics and technology of the found sound can easily be confused with lo-fi aesthetics, field recordings and sampling, but this would be a strong simplification: despite the similarity of techniques and (often) results, it would be useful to consider interest in the found sound as an independent impulse (despite all the difficulties with clearly defining its boundaries).

What distinguishes the examples listed above? Not only the procedure of detecting a “foreign/no-man’s” sound, and not only the mixing of music with non-music, but also the desire to make the found sound both present and opaque, difficult to access. In many cases, this is related to the romanticization of the sound source, as in the recordings of number radio stations: we hear sounds, but we do not have reliable information about their source or meaning, which only enhances our affective and interpretive investment in what we hear. It is important that in the practices of found sound, this paranoid structure of listening is very easily shared by both the listener and the musician who has provided the result of their search and accidental discoveries. They may be equally surprised by these sounds and equally disarmed by them: in many cases, musicians do not frame the found material with more conventional musical elements, preferring to release it in its raw form. Given the simplicity, “naivety,” and unpredictability of many techniques for working with found sound, there is a pleasant convergence that differs from the more familiar pattern of a virtuoso and an admiring audience. This convergence is characteristic of intense cultural forms in which it is easier for the consumer to become a producer. 

 Many examples of working with found sound use the format and aesthetics of an archive, which can refer to research strategies common in contemporary art, the aesthetics of an antique store, or pop cultural nostalgia. This is not always a source effect: often, aging and "impoverishment" become a technique that creates the impression of a found sound (with a seemingly lost provenance) in any sound. Such approaches are often confused with nostalgia and a desire to dig into the past, but it is important not to be deceived: pseudo-nostalgic mediators tend to expand and fill the present by drawing in everything they can reach. This is clearly seen in the example of a photograph, which replaces the virtual past with the actual act of looking – and this is especially true of sound, which happens here and now. Such media bring back the forgotten, attract the unnecessary, and remind us of the uncomfortable, but they also often compulsively repeat the familiar (and for compulsive repetition, there is only the present moment). This is the classic commemorative role of presentation: to present something in a way that ensures that it is not lost in time, but rather happens in the present.

Often, these activities are less about archiving as a strict, specialized procedure and more about hoarding, but not in a condemnatory sense: as the poet Kate Durbin shows in her book "The Thrift Store," each "Plyushkin" has a unique story of emotional connection to items that would normally be completely transparent and replaceable. In some cases, this connection takes on an animistic form, transcending the commodity-based relationship to objects, while in others, it leads to a self-destructive consumer compulsion. Hoarding is an example of the fact that a careful attitude towards the world does not always involve calmness and contemplation; it can also be panicky and impulsive (both of which are not uncommon in music). The uselessness that a third-party observer of hoarding tends to focus on is a resource that can be worked with. Music and sound recording tend to filter out unnecessary sounds, creating clear boundaries between what is necessary and what should be discarded in the current sound environment. The reluctance to throw away and erase unnecessary things is easily converted into the fact that we can listen to recordings from someone else's answering machine and be just as impressed by them as we would be by carefully produced and polished music.

 The practices of found sound do not resist distortion, editing, or processing, but rather embrace them, emphasizing the meditative nature of the recorded sound: Both "purity" and the impoverishment of sound require special means and solutions, and in the case of sound, "purity" is increasingly found not at the level of correspondence to the original source, but at the level of post-processing and technical recording infrastructure. Cutting, adding, slowing down, and crushing sound often give rise to new auditory cultures and practices, just as similar operations with found images have: remember the wave of art based on xerography, photo books with random pictures from the net, etc. After all, visual collage is often a “found image undercover”: just look at how many authors emphasize the “retro” aspect of their materials (often, the collage draws attention precisely because of the atmospheric quality of the source image). Preservation through distortion, presentation through editing – a procedure that often competes with classical representation for its influence on our minds and affects. This is not just an artistic process; it also affects science and everyday communication. The sound that has been found requires attention not only to individual artifacts and oddities, but also to its own technique as an epistemological procedure that subtly asserts the value and effectiveness of presentation, a key way of working with the present in the present.