This Essay Has a Soundtrack

Authors

  • Martin Arnold Trent University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE29721

Abstract

"This Essay Has a Soundtrack" really does have a soundtrack. It is a piece of music composed, performed and recorded by the author that uses a processed version of the essay as its score. The recording of the composition is offered as a possible musical accompaniment to reading the score. While this places such a reading within the field of research-creation, the essay actually engages this field more through speculating about the essay form as a fluid, open, indeterminate and unsubstantiated thing that can, as Adorno puts it: "blow open what cannot be absorbed by concepts.” This engagement with the poetic, aesthetic potentials of the essay serves as an entrance to touching on aesthetic theory more generally, in contact with Montaigne, Adorno, Born, Menke, Seel, Lyotard, Culler, Cazdyn, and Trinh Minh-ha among others. While the essay suggests readers should search for and experiment with alternatives to the translation and interpretation of metaphors when thinking research-creation, the author, does this more as a performance, banging around in-between the thought of others, rather than as a sustained, cogent argument.

Author Biography

Martin Arnold, Trent University

Martin Arnold is a musician and teacher based in Peterborough, ON. As a composer of notated music, his pieces have been performed nationally and internationally by many acclaimed artists. As a performer, he is a member of a number of marginal free improvisation, experimental pop, psychedelic ultralounge, and weird folk communities, playing (very idiosyncratically) melodica, electric guitar, tenor banjo and garage electronics. Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Cultural Studies Department of Trent University.

 

References

Adorno, Theodor W. "The Essay as Form." Translated by Bob Hullot-Kentor & Frederic Will, New German Critique, No. 32,Spring-Summer, 1984, pp. 151-171.

Born, Georgina. "Listening, Mediation, Event: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives." Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 134, Special Issue no. 1, 2009, pp. 79-89.

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Chapman, Owen and Kim Sawchuk. "Research-Creation: Intervention, Analysis and "Family Resemblances"." Canadian Journal of Communication, Volume 37, Issue 1, April 2012, pp. 5-26.

Definitions of Terms: Research-creation. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/definitions-eng.aspx#a22. Accessed 10 August 2024.

Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Cornell University Press, 1981.

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Kauffmann, R. Lane. The Theory of the Essay: Lukács, Adorno, and Benjamin. 1981. UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations. www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6r03r3gp. Accessed 10 August 2024.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Discourse, Figure. Translated by Antony Hudek & Mary Lydon, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Menke, Christoph. The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida. Translated by Neil Solomon, The MIT Press, 1998.

Minh-ha, Trinh T. "Questioning Truth and Fact." Framer Framed. Routledge, 1992.

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Russell, David R. "Ethics and the Essay." The Cambridge Companion to The Essay, edited by Evan Kindley and Kara Wittman, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 154-166.

Seel, Martin. Aesthetics of Appearing. Translated by John Farrell, Stanford University Press, 2005.

Seel, Martin. "The aesthetics of appearing." Translated by John Farrell, Radical Philosophy, Issue 118, Mar/Apr 2003, pp. 18-24. www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/the-aesthetics-of-appearing. Accessed 11 August 2024.

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Published

2025-03-14

How to Cite

Arnold, M. (2025). This Essay Has a Soundtrack. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, 15(3), 263–297. https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE29721

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 3 (2024): A Research-Creation Episteme? Practices, Interventions, Dissensus

Section

writing and de-writing

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Martin Arnold

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This work by https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/imaginations is licensed under a  Creative Commons 4.0 International License although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing under the Canadian Copyright Act.