WEEK 2: ON THE RIGHTS OF MOLOTOV MAN

On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context
By Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas

My opinions of Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas, and whose “side” I was on changed about a dozen times in reading this piece. On the one hand, I agree with Joy, that in the digital age, it’s impossible to know where all images come from, and there is no way to know, from a cropped image, that there is context missing. But on the other hand, to Meiselas’ point, the context is crucial, and removing Molotov Man from the rest of the image does the viewer a disservice. But on the other (other) hand, Susan did not learn his name until returning years later, so it’s a little hypocritical for her to bash Garnett for removing his likeness from context.

It reminds me of the story of the iconic image of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda. It’s plastered everywhere on t-shirts and billboards, completely removed from any context, used to represent many different ideas and motivations. Such is the case with Molotov Man as well, the section of the piece where Meiselas details the various ideologies and social groups he represented was so interesting. There’s no easy solution for the problem of issuing proper credit to a work. When it’s so easy to copy & paste, screenshot, print, paint, or produce a work, it’s nearly impossible to credit the original creator.

I thought about this issue a lot when Olivia Rodrigo started getting heat for similarities between her song “good 4 u” and Paramore’s “Misery Business.” Olivia Rodrigo hasn’t been shy about her musical influences, and it’s not a stretch to say Paramore’s music had an impact on her taste and songwriting. It is, however, impossible to create without influence; to completely remove every song you’ve ever heard from your brain to write something completely new. I was shocked when Rodrigo added two members of Paramore to the songwriting credits of the track, I think it sets a weird and messy precedent for songwriting in the future.

SOUND AND SPACE - LISTEN HERE

For this project, I worked with Daniel Wai.

After both of our original partners dropped the class, we met over Zoom two days before the concept & story arc was due. Both of us came prepared with ideas, and we spent a while throwing ideas at a wall to see what stuck. We were both interested in the project of redesigning sounds for an existing system, and wanted to replace the sounds of something common; something that usually sounds the same across the board. We first thought about maybe doing a microwave, but then he came up with the alarm clock idea, and we both thought it could be fun and interesting. 

The idea was to replace the monotonous beeps of a standard alarm clock with jarring, noisy sounds of New York City. In our planning, we brainstormed a list of sounds we wanted to use, including the clanging of construction, the bell of a bike, and a loud car driving by. 

We recorded around campus, where there is no shortage of loud city noises. We got clips of the subway turnstiles, the beeping of the crosswalk alert, and the sound of a truck backing up. Seeing as our project revolved around the idea of morning and waking up, we tried to get bird sounds to use. But, it was too busy and loud, and we ended up sourcing bird sounds online. 

Our idea evolved then, what if instead of creating sounds for an alarm clock, we created a soundscape of a person, and the city, waking up in tandem. We came up with a character, a citydweller who lives on a busy Manhattan block, who can’t stop hitting the snooze button. 

From there, we sourced sounds online to accompany what we had recorded. For one, we needed an alarm clock, and the sound of a button to show when the person hits snooze. We used freesound.org for all of the extra sounds we used in our final cut.

We also sourced the bike bell sound, which I manipulated in Audition to make it sound like it repeated over and over, coming from down the street, right next to the listener, and then continues down the street. It’s a sound anyone who has ever walked in a city knows well.

I’m glad with how our project turned out. I had never used Audition before, so there was a bit of a learning curve, but I was fascinated to see how much audio manipulation you can do in Audition. I have a newfound (it was always there, but now it’s bigger) respect for audio engineers; it requires real skill to create a detailed, layered soundscape.