I had previously called the Cultural Compost a "methodological framework" which I have realized is perhaps a misnomer since it is actually a conceptual framework on which to drape a methodology. I will attempt to remedy that mistake and also expound one possible methodology within the conceptual framework of Cultural Compost.
One mustn't feel indentured to maintaining a 1:1 correspondence between this framework and the agricultural compost processes but it can be useful to enforce a bit of discipline. Obversely, tails flip to heads, don't be afraid to smear the ratio of comparison to get work done if it comes to blows.
This is not an extremely detailed breakdown but a skeletal diagram that you must fill up with your things and your own workflow. I am not making any direct recommendation of specific tools here (less one exception) because I am not.
I am focusing here on sounds, but a similar process can be used with other media. pictures, video etc with some adjustments. we will need an object on which to operate. Compost is usually made up of discarded waste, so I enjoy working with ephemera that has served it's purpose then been tossed aside. advertising is always good, or tv ID bumpers or interstitials or anything else that was not made for long usage.
Ok, we have a thing so let's think about the way in which compost happens. the thing is broken down mechanically and by critters macro-and-micro into constituent parts that are available for use by a crop. So, we can take our object and we can chop it up in our audio editor. We can manually do this, at random or maybe to a rhythm of transients in the audio. there are also granular glitchers and loop samplers that can procedurally do this based on user params that can provide results you cannot predict which is fun (exception for tool recc here because I think this is a hard category of thing to look for if you aren't balls deep in that granular synthesis life so I will recommend glitchmachines frakture and hysteresis as starting points that are Buttwiper FREE)
We can leave the chunks big or make microslicecs or even not do any chunks, just loop the whole audio many times!
Now we can move on to the critters, which here will be effects and processors; reverb/delays, modulations, frequency manipulations, transient destroying devices, distortions and clippings; these are only a small number of the detritivorous creatures ready to eat and shit out our object into new parts.
And we are not limited to a linear progression; these steps can be done in any order and as many times as it takes. We can take this detritus and send it back through the food chain. take the thing and chop it up again and loop and splice and effectorate and then do it again! We can also add in other objects to the stew and mix them up together.
Skip through the simple steps here as the current takes you and your canoe down river.
GOBACK