Story Telling

Although through decay we do lose the quality that once exsisted, but does that infer another quality can’t flourish. . Perhaps we do loose the initial clarity that once was; however, I feel what could be considered more intriguing are the patterns and textures that are left. This concept is touched on in, ‘Imagination as Space of Freedom’ (Kast, 1993),

“…in an entirely natural manner, boundaries are crossed, space and time relativized, and possibilities we no longer or do not yet have are made available to experience.”

This quotation leads to the question what in fact does then get lost, and what gets added, what is more valuable and coherent? This is relative to every situation, but I become interested in the ‘remnants’ and the value of them; I recorded an experiment to justify this. From my childhood I remember being read my favourite fairy tale ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ which was repeated over and over by different individuals. My mum, dad, brother and grandparents, all participated in generating this compressed memory for me. I wanted to see if I could recreate this by recording their individual voices reading the story, and then layering them on top of one another. Through the repetition of the story and the layered voices, you loose the definition and in a sense it decays. Instead it is replaced with what could be described as a lullaby. You hear when the bears are angry and when Goldilocks is inquisitive; the words only add another layer of consciousness to the story. This example illustrated to me how though the compression; elements do decay; however you can be left with something more valuable and precious. You still hear the emotion in the story, and the comforting voices, but the clarity has decayed just like a memory. Through compression, decay has prevailed, showing a loss of resolution over time; however in this instance the decay isn’t a negative outcome.