The June 2012 Challenge
Recreate an existing creation as if it had been done by somebody else.
Unlike last month, this time you’re not limited to poetry. How would Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” read if it had been written by Philip K. Dick? What if Salvador Dali had been commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel? Or answer the burning question: How would your nine-year-old niece have carved Akhenaton’s statue?
And instead of focusing on dead artists this time, one or both of your creators should be relatively recent — 20th century at the earliest. Bonus points if both artists are still alive today.
The Results
Ryan Finholm
Hirst Koons
My submission is R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”, as if it had been composed by Peter Maxwell Davies around the time that he composed “Eight Songs for a Mad King”. The latter is a 20th-century classical work for a chamber ensemble and a male singer utilizing a good deal of extreme vocal techniques.
I originally was taken with the idea of bringing these two pieces together many years ago. But I never had the resources to actually do it properly. (Hell, I never even had the compositional skills it would call for.) But the idea has stuck with me, all this time. I can’t explain why it seemed so important that this mutant thing be created, but it did, and the feeling has remained undiminished with time. So this month I decided to just do what I could, and recorded a truncated, a capella version. Unfortunately I don’t even have a place to record it without raising alarms, so in the end I recorded it inside a closet in my apartment, with blankets and pillows wrapped around my head (and the recorder) to keep the sounds from alarming my neighbors. This will partly explain the odd sound quality of the recording. (I then electronically added concert-hall reverb to make up the utter lack of ambience in the original.) I still had to hold back quite a bit. A proper performance in a soundproofed room would have been … different.
by Brian — 1 July 2012 @ 01:31