A sonic twist on the article "Christians Shift on Homosexuality" by Tom Krattenmaker.  The article was printed in the USA Today on July 18, 2013.

Audio warm-up project

This project is a remediation of my essay about the composer Iannis Xenakis, in which I try to make a large point about how we “taste” objects while walking the reader through my own gradual acceptance of Xenakis’s music. The largest shifts in my rhetorical consideration dealt mostly with the amount of detail in my argument. I needed to make my argument more engaging, but I felt like I was unable to cut large sections of my paper because they each contribute to my larger argument about taste. While I could not be as detailed in the remediation, having background audio allowed me to be very succinct in sections, especially when describing my dislike for Xenakis and the way that he created his own composition style. The single biggest problem I had in the remediation was dealing with the length of my argument. I really struggled to condense the points that contributed to my larger argument about taste, and as a result I felt like I wasn’t able to allot time for exclusively listening to Xenakis’s music. I feel that if I had spent time exclusively on listening, I would have had to drop my larger point about taste and focused exclusively on my gradual acceptance of Xenakis’s music.  While I think this would have been a more engaging approach, I didn’t take it because I wanted to see if I could contain the scope of my paper’s argument in this short remediation.  The sound effects that I used are my attempt to remain engaging while adhering to the scope of the original paper.   
	I had a couple reasons for using the pieces that I did in the background of my remediation.  The presentation opens with Xenakis’s “Thallein” because it has a heavy, jarring initial impact that relents in a couple seconds allowing me to mention the title of the essay.  I chose the following baroque piece to capture the stereotypical “classical” sound while I talk about the taste category of “music”.  As I begin to talk about architecture and music, this classical piece fades and is replaced by “Metastasis”, one of the compositions based on the architecture of Xenakis.  I chose to use the ending of the piece because its soft starting point and gradual crescendo made the switch from the classical piece not too jarring.  While I talk about my dislike for Xenakis I use a section of “Thallein” that uses asymmetrical rhythms, dissonant harmony, and a light texture. I used this part of the piece because this section of the essay contains many layers of audio, and I needed music capable of expressing my irritation without being so dense that it took audience attention away from my voice or the other sound effects in use.  I use a typewriter sound effect while I talk about Xenakis’s education, and I use a bugle call with mortar blasts in the background while I talk about his experience in the Greek resistance.  I abruptly interrupt the bugle call with a mortar sound effect followed by silence while I talk about the shrapnel that disfigured Xenakis’s face.  The only other sound effects that I use are a heart monitor flat lining and some “laser blasts” to get a mental image of newer technology across.  I use Xenakis’s piece “Concert PH” in this section of the essay because it is basically just ambient noise (it’s the computer-modified sound of charcoal burning).  It is not irritating or distracting, and its low density is important because of the number of audio layers in use.  This piece works as a way for me to share some music and add some depth to the understanding of Xenakis’s music without adding a lot of tension to the listener (like the other pieces do).  I transition again to “Metastasis” while the piece is discussed in my essay.  I again start in a quiet section that builds for the sake of creating a smooth transition between the pieces.  At the end of my essay I use a really gradual decrescendo found at the end of “Metastasis”.  I used this decrescendo because it mirrors and relieves the tension that the horribly dissonant crescendo creates in the concluding section of my essay.

cmarago2