David Chesworth: Tissues for Issues (1984)

Abstract

"This piece derives from a weekly radio tape cartridge of music and spoken word of between two and three minutes duration. The 'cart' was designed to be played two or three times a day, just like a pop song, but without announcement or comment: the piece simply occurred and then disappeared without explanation. The listener, therefore, was not told how to listen to the material. Each week a new 'cart' of original music and spoken word was broadcast. The spoken word material had been collected from television and radio during the week before the broadcast. One aim was arbitrarily to sample the vast amount of information given out through the media rather than to find the most unusual or newsworthy items. My aim was neither to present a theme nor to comment on the material in a critical way; I tried instead to find and make use of rhythmic and textural qualities inherent in the material. This often trivialised what might otherwise have been a significant spoken word item. By contrast, with the help of the music, it gave emphasis to some completely trivial items. This is not dissimilar to what sometimes happens on radio and television, and it is for this reason that I cynically call the work Tissues for Issues. Another objective was to assess the effects of the juxtaposition of different kinds of spoken word and different kinds of music. In Tissues for Issues the music provides the only constant narrative. But does it serve as background music or does it colour the listener's responses to the spoken word? Does it somehow tie the fragments of text together? Tissues for Issues is an orchestrated presentation of information which does not rely on the listener's thirst for useful and relevant inf ormation but rather provides the listener with potential systems of semantic counterpoint which work on a multitude of levels. Tissues for Issues was broadcast weekly on radio stations 3RRR FM Melbourne and 2SER FM Sydney during 1984. It was produced by Anne Carter and myself." -- David Chesworth Show more