Project 3: Constrained Cut-Ups

The many faces of cut-up pioneer William S. Burroughs.

You've already received more thorough instructions on this assignment than I'm going to provide here in your foundations readings from Burroughs and Gysin, but for inspiration's sake, here are a few passages from "The Invisible Generation" to help you re-engage with the cut-up methodology:

it's all done with tape recorders consider this machine and what it can do it can record and play back activating a past time set by precise association a recording can be played back any number of times you can study and analyze every pause and inflection of a recorded conversation  

the simplest variety of cut up on tape can be carried out with one machine like this record any text rewind to the beginning now run forward an arbitrary interval stop the machine and record a short text wind forward stop record where you have recorded over the original text the words are wiped out and replaced with new words do this several times creating arbitrary juxtapositions you will notice that the arbitrary cuts in are appropriate in many cases and your cut up tape makes surprising sense 

the use of irrelevant response will be found effective in breaking obsessional association tracks all association tracks are obsessional get it out of your head and into the machines stop arguing stop complaining stop talking let the machines argue complain and talk a tape recorder is an externalized section of the human nervous system you can find out more about the nervous system and gain more control over your reactions by using the tape recorder than you could find out sitting twenty years in the lotus posture or wasting your time on the analytic couch

Okay, so now on to the technical specifics of the project. First, as the title suggests, your participation will be constrained in two ways:

1. I've chosen the four recordings you'll be using for this project and have numbered them in a somewhat anonymous way so that you won't know what you're getting until you've chosen.
2. The number of tracks you'll need to make use of in some way (a lot or a little, this can vary depending on your needs) will be chosen by a random number generator in the form of drawing a card from a deck of four.

Click here to draw your card. The card showing when the page loads is your selection. Then download your recording(s) from the links below:

1   /   2   /   3   /   4

As I said above, you can use as much or as little of the source recording(s) as you like. You can also manipulate the recordings — speed up, slow down, reverse, echo, pitch-shift, distort, ring modulate, etc. — however you see fit. For most poets, the prevailing impulse will be to create something intentional out of these raw materials but you might desire to make more random cuts and juxtapositions and see what emerges. Don't forget Pierre Schaeffer's framing of concrete composition (vs. the traditional "abstract" method; see right), which might be another useful guide as you complete this project.

Your responses to this prompt should be in MP3 format — either as a SoundCloud link or an e-mail attachment — with a minimum length of ~30 seconds and a maximum length of ~2 minutes (if you're really inspired and produce something longer let me know and we can discuss). Please post your response by our class time on Friday, September 25th, and we can probably aim to start workshopping these poems the week of the 28th.