Abstract

By looking into alternative listening practices within the context of Modern Scripted

Audio Drama, both as a medium as well as a contemporary sonic culture, this Audio

paper will attempt to analyse the material qualities of Audio Drama and theorise ways

that these practises may be applied. As well as give insight into how the culture of Audio

Drama can be steered in a more open, accessible, experimental and radical direction.

There is not much of a crossover between sound arts and Audio Drama. By making

these analyses and interpretations, This audio paper will attempt to bridge that gap, and

provide some practical directions and ideas.

Much of the research was done through analysis of relevant sources and interviews with

several figures who work within Audio Drama who each provide a different perspective

on the medium.

The ultimate conclusion is an encouragement to the Audio Drama community, both

listeners and producers, to learn to love and intentionally use “bad” audio and to seek

out productions made by newer creators. The hope being that more marginalised voices

will use audio drama to create politically radical productions and audio drama as a

whole will begin to be made in more experimental ways.

This Audio Paper Included audio from interviews with:

Lee Tomaneli

Marisa Ewing

Amber Devereux

Ella Watts

Quotes read by:

Gregory Carrobis

Avalon Willowbloom

Joe Cruz

Bibliography

Brandon Labelle, Bulut , Z., Chattopadhyay, B., Kanngieser, A., Frahm , O., Vrhovec Sambolec,

T.G., Stjerna, Å. and Raimondo, A. (2016). Dirty Ear Report #1. sound, multiplicity, and radical

listening

Brooks, A. (2015). 'Glitch/Failure: Constructing a Queer Politics of Listening', Leonardo Music

Journal (2015), 25, pp. 37-40. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1162/LMJ_a_00932.

Chion, M. 2019. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia

University Press.

Heptonstall, G. (1988). NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RADIO DRAMA. RSA Journal, 136,

pp.273–275.

Jackson, D. (2020). Earwitnessing the Queer Acoustics of Public Space: Law, Sex and Nature

in Ultra-red’s Second Nature. Law Text Culture, [online] 24, pp.328–363. Available at:

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1406&context=ltc.

Ultra-Red. (2011). Five Protocols for Organised Listening. Available at:

http://www.ultrared.org/uploads/2012-Five_Protocols.pdf [Accessed: 6 November 2023].

Ultrared.org. (2024). Ultra-red: Mission Statement. [online] Available at:

http://www.ultrared.org/mission.html [Accessed 24 Jan. 2024].

Watts, E. (2018). Drama Podcasts An overview of the US and UK drama podcast market.

[online] Available at:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio/commissioning/Drama-Podcast-Research-Dec2018.pdf.

Watts, E. (2018). Audio Drama and the Art of the Invisible Wall. [online] IPM. Available at:

https://www.internationalpodcastmonth.com/blog/the-art-of-the-invisible-wall [Accessed 6 Nov.

2023].

Watts, E. (2020). The Gays Destroy Capitalism in Space: the Radical Imagination of Audio

Fiction. [online] IPM. Available at:

https://www.internationalpodcastmonth.com/blog/the-gays-destroy-capitalism-in-space

[Accessed 6 Nov. 2023].

[room tone, sound of equipment being switched on, objects being moved around, a mouse clicking and mic handling noises]

Cai: This entire audio paper is very, very messy, kind of on purpose, actually no, explicitly on purpose, just because of what I'm talking about. The most linear parts of this will be the introduction and the conclusion. I think the journey of my approach to sort of researching and thinking about this is kind of represented in the way that I've put this all together. So apologies if you're expecting something very linear.

Okay. Audio Drama is a form of stery- fuck me.

Audio Drama is a form of storytelling that exists in an audio only format. This paper is going to be referring to audio drama as a distinct form of storytelling that differs from radio drama. It does, of course, draw from its predecessors in radio drama. But you know, this is talking about the modern scene specifically, we will be talking largely about English language audio drama, and the English language audio drama scene, which is largely Western. The main sort of distinguishing feature between the audio drama and radio drama is the use of the internet as its main form of dissemination, using RSS feed to spread a piece across a variety of platforms.

The current space has a very healthy independent DIY scene, which I am a part of, I have been doing audio drama for three plus years now I do my own called Chain of Being, which is a sort of sci-fi epic thing, which started off as just me trying to do a Tolkien and create my own universe, but has since kind of expanded into my political musings and sort of experimental sound arts, trying to include that, which is basically what this entire thing is, is trying to figure out how we can have an experimental sound arts lens of audio drama. One of the reasons I sort of started and I think this story is pretty common amongst a lot of people, at least that I've spoken to, is that publishing has very little barrier to entry. And that, you know, you can find free services, which I was using for a long, long time to host your stuff. You know, Audacity is free. And there is a sort of baseline level of privilege you need with like internet access, computer access, time, and resources and energy to do this as well as a microphone. But because of these kind of lack of massive companies that are like stopping you from creating something that you want to make, like there is with TV and film, there is a space and a very strong potential for radical stories, queer stories, marginalise stories to be told, it's important to stress that the medium and community does have its issues. And I think even more important is to stress the word potential. It does have these problems in terms of representation, and who is being listened to, and why this is going to be talked about much later in the essay. But yeah, I'm not ignoring that.

However, between the space of radical stories and the medium being audio exclusive, modern audio drama has an amazing opportunity to be a place of very experimental and potentially transformative art. I'm going to be looking at Andrew Brooks Politics of Queer listening, Brandon Labelle’s Dirty Ideas, which is in the Dirty Ear Report, and ULTRA RED’s Five protocols for organised listening as my main sources and approaches to listening, I'm going to consider these forms from the perspective of what they can mean to audio drama mainly. And then try and make some observations about how you can take these into a production standpoint, as well as how you as a listener, if you are a listener, and not a producer can kind of use these approaches to listening in a way to encourage and appreciate I think audio drama in a very different way.

I'm going to be looking at each one sort of one after the other and considering sort of the intent. And I'll be using interviews from Lee Tomaneli, who does the Sound Museum, Amber Devereaux who does the tower I mean, you probably know them if you're in the industry, but does The Tower and Folxlore and a myriad of other things. Ella Watts, who is a producer, director and kind of advocate for indie audio drama, and Marisa Ewing, who is the founder of Hemlock Creek productions. We're going to be using a Queered definition of sound sort of gleaned from the different approaches to listening that have been discussed. I think there will be a reference to sound's ability to unsettle and call together the queerness of sound in relation to failure and dirt, as well as the power of listening as a force for change. In this context, noise, and what I'll be using the word dirt a lot is queer, (which will be explained basically in like a minute) The connection of listening and the way it can kind of prepare us for creating a new connection and understanding of something as well as how united we are in the purposes of listening. But it's also going to be very nonlinear. Because I'm taking this definition from the beginning to the end, the rest of this thing is going to be nonlinear and I hope you can kind of forgive me for that

[Narration continues, the recording comes from a phone while walking by a semi-busy road]

you want you want experimental stuff to take over. And I think there's obviously a long way to go in terms of- I would love it to be like the music scene. There's just like different tiers of just some really, really just ridiculous shit going on background, sort of underground sense that eventually, someone listens to that who does something that more popular then someone does something similar to that that’s even more popular, and it kind of creates this, you know, the ecosystems of art, and the medium. I don't think this is how you should, you know, make your Audio Drama, I don't want to be that prescriptive. But I think it's worth, you know, considering how you approach listening to, you know, the things that you listen to. I do understand, it's also a background medium. But you know, I think, you're still listening, you will still find plots, otherwise, you just listen to like ambient music, right? Like, you always have to have some kind of focus… I dont know. But I just think I just think there's a lot of different like approaches you can take. And these ones are definitely tailored to my specific sort of aesthetic interests. But I think I think a lot of like the baseline stuff can be extrapolated to something a bit more personal to each sort of producer.

[A new recording, intense whir of computer fans, ratling on the table, a sudden and intense typing on a computer, when the voice comes in it sounds as if it is coming from the other side of the room]

The first method of listening that we're going to be looking at is one that I am sort of very tempted to kind of just put in a bunch of quotes from it. And that kind of is my explanation, which is, you know, going to be doing more than that, for sure. But I think that there is, you know, it really does speak for itself. But it's Andrew Brooks doing the politics of queer listening in relation to sort of glitch music, and then sort of expanding that even further into, like failure, and how that is kind of a queer aesthetic,

“A queer reading of failure points to a kind of radical questioning of norms, identities and goals,”

[a new recording, very low quality, a recording of a recording]

It's a really sort of eye opening kind of thing for me, because it really links a lot of what my own kind of approaches to sonic aesthetics have been. And I think it'd be a really interesting way to talk about queer media. I think that there is a professionalism that a lot of audio drama drama tries to sort of strive for. It’s something that's come up in the interviews that I've done for this. but I think just allowing, allowing noise and allowing glitch and I think willfully including it, I think is an even stronger statement to make in terms of queer sonic aesthetics

“The disruption of representation in glitch practices disrupts the experience of listening as a reproduction of a live event by highlighting and foregrounding the imperfection and error of reproduction technologies”

[ back to the whirs of computer fans]

Brooks essentially says that- this sort of kind of mental algebra, I guess, is that if queer- like failure is queer, and in terms of failure to kind of adhere to heteronormative, cisgender and monogamous ideals of family and society…

“Queer theory glitches the understanding of identity as a stable and fixed category, by introducing noisy concepts into normative systems”

[a distorted recording, moderately deepfried]

… and the failure of technology to completely replicate a certain ideal of voice of like the sort of quote unquote, “reality” have artistic and kind of I guess, this is sort of me reading into it, but kind of almost spiritual link between those two things. And that there is, you know, reading failure in this way, I think, links queerness and glitch in [this recording fades out and gives way to a new cleaner narration]

okay, I sort of meander a lot in my explanation here. So what I'm going to do is play you a recording of my friend Joe, who read out the conclusion to Andrew Brooks' essay, you can kind of basically get the original source. I think he does a very good job of putting it together. So here it is:

“The glitch reveals the substructures and hidden layers of systems. The presence of the parasite - noise - always suggests the potential for new relations to be made and remade within a given system. A queer listening practice listens to the noise of parasite, tuning in to the sound of the relations. Such a listening practice uses the ear as a way of thinking through relations of power; it is a mode of listening attuned to the production, transmission and mutation of the affective tonalities of dominant neoliberal late-capitalist cultures. To read queer theory through the lens of experimental music practices is an attempt to both reorient the politics of experimental sonic arts and construct a queer politics of hearing,”

[A new recording, heavily compressed]

I think you can kind of expand this idea, though of like, unwanted glitches and kind of unwanted noise. I think, you know, the sort of glitch and virus that Brooks talks about, sort of is definitely very specific to glitch music, but I think this this concept of noise, kind of bringing it to that point, I think you can, you can point that to a lot of different things that in sort of sound design and editing and sort of audio drama. The one thing that I sort of really, really sort of stuck to was this idea of breaths I think leaving in the breaths

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Cai: I think for me is is it for some reason, just feels quite significant,

Lee: right

Cai: Even subconsciously, you're reminded that there's a person there and having it be a little bit messy and having it be kind of these- I mean, going back to the “does every sound needs to have a meaning”. Like Yeah, can you have superfluous sounds if you leave if you have the sounds of a person's house, you know, think this whole time I've heard my housemates and I hope- I'm hoping weirdly enough that it's picked up on the mic but my housemates are talking and someones dropped something above me and someone's moving and the fucking Wi Fi died and all this kind of thing. So I think you know, people living a life around other people and kind of leaving that in and leaving imperfections in I think becoming okay with imperfection and change and difference, I think is you know, yeah, that's my approach obviously,

[new recording, kind of muffled and distorted by tape]

I tried to record this point on tape, but I fucked up somehow I think my setup was a little bit messy. So completely unintelligible but I'm gonna play underneath me actually making the point…

but it's not just breath it's also like mouth pops and clicks and the kind of sort of thing that happens when you open your mouth I think that's all part of the same aspect of like human voice that we should absolutely leave in and shouldn't take out

[a sound piece, all of the mouth noises and breaths and clicks and pops from the quotes, with occasional words left in]

[a recording, over the phone]

What then comes from removing sounds of the body? I find that it creates a kind of sanitised professionalism, there's a perfect world where the body isn't a body, and only what is needed from a person is taken and used. Any noise or dirt is completely absent of this. I think asking ourselves why we take out these noises can be a useful exercise. I personally used to do these kinds of things without thinking. It is of course entirely possible that you can justify taking the sounds out but you may also find that a reminder of the humanity of a person is important to a story. There is an inherent juxtaposition as well between the sort of chaos of queerness as suggested by glitch theory, and the very fact that is being ordered and processed as a listable piece of art. Consumable, even, if you feel like being a bit more mean.

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Cai: Thats the thing it's like, well, this is- everything- This is all lies, like, you know everything we do is fake. Like the punch isn't a punch, footsteps aren't actually happening that character isn't real, like it's kind of like it is a representation of chaos while ordered is like a stand in for the actual chaos that you will experience. Do you see what I mean?

Amber: Yeah, I think Ella describes it as magic tricks

[Computer fans whir, voice is a distance away from the mic]

I’m focusing a lot of breaths [pause, mic falls over] because I think it encapsulates what I'm talking about pretty well but any noise any kind of stuff you would normally remove, I think room tone and background noise, artefacts and digital glitching. I think record stuff on older media, I think include examples of things not being perfect. I think you can also include it in a sort of content way. I think to sort of show the messiness of queerness, and all its pains and dirt, and to include the sort of comfortable and unfortunate elements of what it is to be queer is a really important thing. I think it's beautiful and amazing. But it would be doing it a disservice if we didn't include every aspect of what it is to be queer in the context of sort of society that we have now.

[a new recording, muffled, high pitched feedback plays over it which comes in and out]

In sort of to answer that question of kind of, you know, the juxtaposition of ordering, you know, queerness, which is itself, I think, a very chaotic term that resists definition and order. But I think that's what we're doing right now is we're ordering and representing something that doesn't exist.

[deepfried distorted recording]

But I think also to interpret what it means to be queer in a way of like, you know, holding it in this, in a similar way that you would like glitch I think is really important. And I think, to use Andrew Brooks, interpretation of queerness as failure. And to sort of bring that into sound, I think is- is a very useful way to represent and interpret queerness.

[a new recording, low quality codec style]

And I think, using worse audio, and allowing glitches to enter into your work, I think is one of I'm sure a myriad of ways to do that. But yeah, these are just some examples.

“These Sonic objects, the detritus arising from malfunctioning digital audio technologies, form the material basis for music practices that transform unwanted noise into signal. Practitioners of glitch rather than attempting to suppress noise, amplify, [a fire engine begins to sound off in the distance and gets louder] and encourage it. [greg laughs] Wow…[fire engine passes right by the house] I do live a five minutes walk from the fire house....

[textured distorted recording]

And as listeners, I think having to get more comfortable with you know, not as good audio, I think finding an appreciation of it as is. I think, don't go “Oh, its good, except the audio is not great” Find the beauty in noise and not great audio and what that stands for and what that means as a creator who is making something with- not as quote unquote, like “good” or “professional” equipment. If we can get to this point where bad audio is kind of appreciated in this way I think that it paves the way for way more accessible community and media, as sort of leading from Andrew Brooks point about sort of exposing dominant power structures and sort of- I think it's almost quite anti capitalist, to love bad audio, because it means that you can buy a really shitty mic or use the built in mic on your laptop, and still create something that is widely appreciated. If that's what you're trying to go for when you're making art, of course.

Yeah, I think developing your ear to a point where you are comfortable with noise I think is really important as a listener, but also as a producer, I think everyone can just, you know, relax a bit in terms of trying to get professional…

[sound piece, room tone getting cut off and muted so it emulated the tide, its rythmic]

[as the quote is read, several ambiences play one after the other with no fading]

“Sound is an act of proliferation, it is always more than one might think or be able to comprehend. It rushes forward touching walls and floors, brushing against this body. It is a special agitation. Because as a consequence of its intense movements and circulations, its disruptions and its caresses. It is always somewhere between coherence and fragmentation…”

dirty ideas is a essay, I suppose, that features within the dirty ear Report Number one, which is basically this kind of forum of sound artists and sort of practitioners brought together in Berlin, where they sort of gather essays and interviews and kind of manifestos from people that were like participating and try and sort of point to listening as as a kind of foundation for activism almost. I really like Brandon Labelle's Dirty Ideas. It kind of almost reads like a poem, which I find quite appealing. And it's just absolutely chock full of like, declarative statements about

Sound

“Sound is always somewhere between coherence and fragmentation. it may bring together in a profound way, or it may interrupt with such force, and it may do both at the same time.”

[a recording made with the gain too high]

It crosses over with glitch theory slightly in the way that they both talk about kind of queering sound. And the way that sounds ability to Queer things and glitch talks about it through glitch and then I expanded it to noise. Brandon Labelle explicitly talks about listening as a way to change certain set ideas and sort of set concepts, which is quite Queer.

“Listening can be understood as the unsettling of boundaries, it clears the borders of this body”,

[more standard clean recording]

My big takeaway, or at least my big sort of extrapolation for how this can sort of work with audio drama, is that if we sort of take Brandon Labelles idea that sound is this potential for change. And there is a kind of inherent connection...

“Listening is fundamentally a position of not knowing to listen is to stand in wait for the event. For the voice that may come it is a preparation for common recognition for confronting what may be so familiar or what may stand in contrast to myself”

Then the role of the producer and the sound designer especially, becomes one of a sort of guide in this connection,

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Marisa: I think the sound designers job is to match the, I guess the- the story creators vision and kind of inform the audience how they're supposed to feel. And maybe they successfully do it, maybe they don't. But in general, you're kind of acting as like a guide, or a bridge between the storyteller and the audience.

Amber: All good art is a conversation, right? Like, like, it's a conversation between what the producer is trying to say, and what the audience is interpreting. And, and somewhere in the middle, you get a consensus. And I think that's-Wwhere that consensus is, is really interesting. And I think in sound design, or sorry, in audio drama, it's much more interesting, because the medium is so abstract.

[Recording made outside on a zoom h4n, the panning is all funky]

Art is a conversation, one guided by a producer, yes, but there is still a shaking of hands between the listener and the producer. By listening alone, the audience is opening themselves to changing. The vision of a collective of people in different locations is so socialist, we’re each bringing ourselves into it individually, but experiencing it collectively.

“What I hear is not myself, but myself hearing myself, I am always already an echo, and echo within a commons of echoes,”

[High roomtone recording]

I think it would be a terrible shame as people trying to envision better futures and hoping for a better world to not use this connection, you know, to create an audio drama that explicitly tells you how to reject the sort of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. The connection and intimacy of audio drama, I think is stronger than most other mediums because the voice is right there, like literally right next to you. And the engagement in audio is sort of different and more unique, and I think better suited to enacting change.

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Ella: I think that oration is inherently political, I think that we can look at like Cicero for that, like, I think that speaking in a public forum is deeply political, and often the most powerful way to convey your political message. I think there's a reason that we still have, like, houses of parliament, like I think words are effective in conveying political meanings. And because radio only focuses on words, it puts much more weight on what words you're using to express yourself and how

[high roomtone recording]

I sort of hope that the main takeaway from this is that there is that inherent connection, I think, understanding the connection and the sort of unifying force of listening and sound can be used very powerfully. You may have already come to this conclusion, you may already sort of intuitively know this. But I think fully understanding and using it to your advantage is the most important thing that I would like people to take away from this. And it's definitely the most important thing that I have taken away from it.

[recording of a recording from a small bad speaker]

In the context of listening as well, I think lean into it, really- I suppose saying “pay attention” is kind of- not so much but yeah sort of understand you're opening yourself up when you listen to an audio drama,

[distant room tone mic]

there is a person making it and you know, the intention and reasoning behind all the things they do and say, will be there. And I think allowing yourself a deeper analysis of what they're trying to say. On top of, if more people trying to say more, I think collectively we'll kind of have more of a conversation and the back and forth in what we want out of the world.

“As conceptualised by the modernist Avant Garde our protocols for listening gave high priority transforming auditory perception. Listening, however stopped short of taking action to transform the world one perceives”

[recording from a mic held too close]

The protocols for organised listing are five categories of protocols for essentially political organisation through the lens of listening

“the protocols for such listening, produce not only consensus, but also dissonance, the

multivalence of subjectivities. Learning to listen is an intentional act of solidarity,”

[cleaner mic]

There's a real emphasis throughout the entire thing on listening and re-listening and making sure that you are accountable to your own commitments, and also the communities that you may or may not be working with,

[recording from a mic held too close]

it's very in depth, and there's a lot to sort of work with, that I can't necessarily do within the time that I have here. But in terms of taking something from it for the purposes of audio drama, and in this context, I think that it can be sort of quite interesting to use it in a context that it wasn't necessarily intended for. But it does very much, within it ,stress that it's not meant to be sort of set in stone. And that if you treat them like these tenets, you end up kind of following them just for the sort of aesthetic purposes or just kind of the without any actual like effect on them, which I think is a really interesting sort of point to make, especially in the context of like political organising,

“The protocols compiled in this workbook remind us of the important dialectical rapport between open attentiveness and intentional commitment. Without that dialectic, listening procedures can fall dangerously into rigid formalism, or aesthetic experience for its own sake, a protocol is not a formula. Neither is it the procedure itself,”

[cleaner mic]

I gather, that you can kind of take certain elements and figure out what works best for you. And it's a workbook, essentially. So trying to figure out how to intersect it with audio drama, I think would probably be a lifelong mission. So what I did for the purposes of this was asked each of the people that I interviewed, “on whose terms is the listening happening” in audio drama. And I'm going to play you everybody's responses, everybody was given very little to go with, on purpose. I wanted to see the different interpretations of the question that could be drawn from it. I think there was a very interesting sort of series of crossovers, in what people sort of took that to mean. And I think, yeah, it reveals a lot about sort of how it feels to be an artist, but also a lot about audio drama as a medium, but also a community. And so in the spirit of ULTRA RED, let's listen together.

Amber: The Tower, I think, has always been on my terms, at least. because it's, it's always been a case of like, this is what I want to talk about, these are the things that I think are interesting. But it's also in terms of a listening experience… It's kind of like, right, well, we're going to tell this in a slightly odd way, compared to what, you know, people would mostly listen to, like we had an entire- I think in the first two parts, there's, there's a whole episode that's just a piece of music. Which has proved divisive among reviewers, but like- one person was like, “What the hell is this, there's no content here.” And I’m like there’s-! There’s-! There’s a piece of music man!

Cai: Did you listen??

Amber: My kind of interpretation of something happening on the listeners terms, is, you know, kind of meeting people where they are, I think, like, like- For me, that's a practical question. Rather than a sort of ideological one, like, like, the thing that I was always told was mix for the tube. And like being aware of how listeners, how people listen to your stories. It's one of the things I find very frustrating about kind of cinematic audio drama, is that it's, you know, like Audible is- have this big thing right now being like, Oh, we're releasing stuff in 5.1 surround and i’m like who the fuck is listening to audio dramas in 5.1 surround??

Cai: No one fucking has a 5.1 system in their house,

Amber: Yeah, right?

Cai: Who the fuck has that?

Amber: It's like, unless you're going to the cinema to listen to an audio drama, like nobody… Like it's a thing that bugs me, because it's just like what you're doing there is you're trying to you're trying to be really technically impressive without thinking about the audience at all…

Marisa: I would honestly say that that it's more on the listeners terms than on mine. I think I can try and present my ideas as best as I can, using you know, these different elements in my work, but Ultimately, the listener is the one that interprets it. And I think that that's like, pretty common with, like, other mediums as well. But just like, sometimes interpretation can vary wildly from the artists intentions. So I think having good sound design and present, presenting the story in a clear and concise way can like shorten that gap. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter what my intentions are, if the listeners aren't interpreting it that way.

Lee: It is interesting, because you're, you're really not going to reach anyone ever in audio fiction, unless you have people already listening to you, you know? it's why, you know, comedians get these, like top charts of podcasts that are really kind of mediocre. It's like, well, they already had a fan base, You know? So one of the reasons why I felt able at all to do the amount of work that I have done on the Sound Museum, is because I didn't feel like I was going to shout it into a void. That is the vast sea of podcasting, you know, because it's huge, like everyone always jokes around, they're just like, “ah, Lee, you're just another white guy with a podcast.” And I'm like, You're right, you're kind of right in that like, in that, like a lot of people who really, I just don't care about what they have to say, have a podcast. And usually it's interview, which is going to be like another another different thing, or just like a chat podcast and whatever. And so it ends up being like, like, Dante and I did a show called [REDACTED] And the only reason why people listened to it back then was because he was already big on tiktok, and a lot of people like came from that like realm into into listening to this show. And then they told people so it becomes very word of mouth and very community oriented, but like, you know, people with an internet connection, but also people affiliated with a larger work, you know, again, Faustian nonsense is like a community of folks. And so I feel comfortable pouring hours and hours and hours and hours into something, which I mean, what does that say about me as an artist being like, “well, I need it to go somewhere.” Could I just create it on my own? Maybe I don't know who's to say?

Cai: would you make sound museum if you knew no one would listen.

Lee: I did you know, I made sound museum knowing that no one would listen. But I can say it feels a lot better knowing that people might. You know what I mean?

Ella: I think a really big problem. One of one of the biggest problems with audio drama, in my opinion is that the the people in charge of like, who's listening to what and on what terms are white people and middle class people and Americans, audio drama is overwhelmingly white. And it has a separate community of black creators who have partly separated because they do not feel as comfortable like in the white spaces, I started running an audio drama day for london podcast festival. Both years, I tried really hard to make sure that there weren't exclusively white people on stage. And what I found really interesting was the second year, the majority black show that we had was a show called Radio Elucia. And that was the show where all of the white creators decided to take their lunch break and not show up. And it was really interesting that when you went into that room, it was nine 9 of 10 black people in the audience, like no white people bothered to show up. And then this year at the audio drama day, first of all, not a single show had a non white person in front of or behind the mic. And then second, when there was a majority black show, they specifically chose to not be part of audio drama day despite being an audio drama they specifically chose to be on the following week. Because the didnt feel comfortable being in the community because it's not a welcoming space to people who aren't white. It’s also really not a welcoming space to disabled people or working class people. It's this thing of this sort of passive majority who are quite comfortable in how they are and don't particularly like being challenged, so they won't go out of their way to hurt people, but they also won't go out of their way to help. Unfortunately, I find that that is what the audio drama community does a lot of the time. It is a lot of comfortable white middle class queer people being comfortable and white and middle class. It has a domino and a filter down effect right? Because the reality is that if you are black or if you are physically disabled, you are much more likely to earn much less money, which means you are much more likely to be working class, which means that all of this affects you more harshly than it affects like a white non disabled working class person. And so like we just see this kind of like absolute fucking domino effect of like A: It's majority middle class B: It's majority white. C: it's majority abled. It means that the audio drama that gets produced can fall into patterns of becoming an echo chamber that's only listening to itself. Queer-ing something is to trouble and change and challenge. Any set idea or regime very sadly, the queer audio drama space quite often just reinforces its own set of aesthetics rather than creating a space in which people can be comfortable like I know people who like- people of colour who've come into audio drama spaces like discord servers and Facebook groups and have immediately been challenged like immediately on entering because they didn't know someone in the space already. And that's exactly how- that kind of passport system is exactly how white communities in particular, maintain white power structures. So anyway, so I think that sadly, in terms of who decides who's listening and how they're listening on, on what terms, middle class white people, and that has a toxic knock on effects for the value of the art, and also, it has a limiting effect on how political and radical the art can be.

[recording on a phone mic, compressed down to a very poor quality mp3, footsteps down stairs, conversation between housemates, stepping outside]

There's probably a lot to interpret and I think to interpret from the wider interviews as well, sort of listening to the rest of them I think there's a lot that came up. But in terms of just this question, I guess the two, the two sort of main categories of interpretation, I suppose, is kind of like, on whose terms as an individual, but then also on whose terms in the wider audio drama community scene? I think as an individual, I guess, the sense of what you're putting in and how you're presenting it as sort of the two, I guess, subcategories of that. In an indie sense, what's being put out there, I think, ultimately is up to you and is on your terms, I think, you know, I think that it should really only be what you want to see made. I mean, that's why I think any good thing is made because the person was really into it, I think make it as if no one's gonna listen. And, and in a technical sense, I think, if somebody does end up listening, it's worth putting in some consideration into what context and the kind of material ways that it will be received. Where you're sort of coming up with something to be made based on what you want and then the way it's received by an audience, there is a kind of middle ground where you have to go well, in order to have it received Best- to get your point across best. I think the sense that, ultimately, you can't control how it's received, and you can try your best to guide it in a certain direction but really, once it's out of your hands, it's out of your hands. I think that interaction between what's being presented and what's being received, I think is where that technical sense sort of comes into play. And also where I think art kind of lies is in that sort of gap.

Communication, you know, it's flawed. So I think that that kind of grey space, that sort of void is where new ideas come into fruition and sort of inspiration happens, which I think is really interesting, especially sort of talking earlier about the wider kind of ecosystem of art, I think, happens in that space, which I think is really cool. And in terms of a wider scene, the sort of, I guess, yeah, people with a wider backing and sort of fan base and network people that already have kind of support seems to be like the big thing. Then also, how somebody gets that wider support and fan base, the whole idea of it being sort of extremely, sort of dominantly, white, middle class, able bodied. Sort of all that's happened really is that those those white middle classes able bodied people are just queer as well. Like, you know, cool, but also, I think we need to do a lot more and expand it further. The idea that like “who is being listened to” Isn't everyone is quite a distressing thing and I think Ella’s really right that it does devalue the sort of radical-ness that audio drama can have. It's interesting. I think it can be good and I stress potential at the beginning and I will stress potential at the end. But we're not there yet.

[sound arts piece, segments distorted voice warped and delayed rapidly playing faster and faster]

[Computer whir, recorded some distance from the mic]

My conclusions are, I guess, best put together in just a series of statements and I probably won't be able to help myself but elaborate a little bit.

Noise and dirt are something we should learn to love. I think it's a beautiful aesthetic anyway. And not just because you know what it can represent in the context of, you know, a medium that tells a lot of queer stories. To take something that is a representation of failure to tell a story about something that is a representation of failure, I think is beautiful. But also in a wider sense of making it more accessible, I think.

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Cai: -and leaving imperfections in, I think becoming okay with imperfection and change and difference, I think is, you know, that's my approach obviously

[Computer whir, recorded some distance from the mic]

It means that people don't have to strive for a perfection that can never really be achieved. And a professionalism that is never going to be gotten because it's not a medium right now, at least that makes a lot of money. And if you're trying to make a lot of money doing it, you know, you want to make this your career, that's totally fine. But I think in terms of, if you want to make art and make a really good sort of story in that way, I think leaning into dirt more, I think is a really good way to go.

[recording taken from a video call interview]

Amber: It's not about, necessarily, like, you know, you might only get three listeners, but like, those three listeners might go on and make an audio drama, you know,

[Computer whir, recorded some distance from the mic]

There is a sort of inherent connection listening together. And I think in telling a queer story, and then if you want to tell political stories, which queerness is political. I think that considering the connection that an audience has, and that you have with a Creator, I think is something to keep in mind. I think that, you know, allowing yourself to sort of understand the political implications of a story, I think, is really important and the political implications of a story you’re creating. I think the unification that comes from listening is really important. Finding a community and getting a support network is very important. I think that if you want to be heard, building up that support, I think you can't do it on your own, you shouldn't do it on your own. As a listener, a way to counter I suppose the kind of clique creations and the sort of, if you want to amplify certain voices, you know, you want to counter the gatekeeper-ness. Start seeking out smaller productions, and I think seeking out productions by marginalised people beyond the kind of dominant middle class, white, able bodied creators. I think, you know, on top of not wanting, and not seeking out higher quality audio not caring about it, and actually loving worse audio. I think people that are just getting started will have a much better and easier time of beginning, I guess, if you're in a position of power, but if the people in the position of power will open to allowing people to come in if they don't know anyone else, I guess we wouldn't be in this situation. But I think as listeners we can do that. As a producer learning to work more with sort of dirty audio. And I think then, in that people that are trying to get started and can't afford better mics won't need to have to, you know, struggle to work up to that point. I think it means that anyone can give it a go, which I think is always good. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Yeah. I think I think I think there's still some way to go. But I think doing these things, at least, I think will be a really good start.