Section 1: Introduction
Set the stage by looking at a historically significant moment in radio production: the late-90s, early-00s transition from analog to digital production technologies in public radio networks and the independents that feed them programming.
Present an overview of Martin’s main media artifacts to be analyzed in this essay (the LINEbreak series, Engaged, and the Radio Radio series) and how they offered a break with conventional approaches to non-fiction radio.
Formulate the main research question: Why has the self-consciously digital ‘rhetorics’ proposed by Martin in his broadcasts and articles not yet been taken up more widely in public audio information programming?
Briefly and tentatively suggest some answers to this: These techniques actually have been taken up but not in the way and in the places Martin originally imagined. Also, Martin’s writing and outreach seems to emphasize new possibilities for meaning making at the site of production. Had he given more attention to the creative work happening at the scene of consumption he might have realised more inroads.
Section 2: Theoretical contextualization (ideas)
Using the critics Martin refers to in his critical writing (Marinetti, Benjamin, Barthes, Saussure, Puttenham, the Frankfurt School) situate him critically—concerned with the materiality (physicality) of language and the creative and political potential of that materiality. He is concerned with semiotics and aesthetics.
Discuss how meaning is conventionally generated through audio speech using an analog framework.
Explain what his ‘digital’ rhetorics might sound like.
Look at alternative approaches to grappling with the same issues and suggest some potential shortcomings (offer Reader Response Theory and Reception Theory).
Section 3: A historical creative trajectory
Situate Martin’s work on a trajectory of sound-language experimentation. Include mentions of Russolo, Marinetti, Gould, Burroughs, Migone, Oswald, Pitts, Whitehead and DJ Spooky.
Make some connections to the previous ideas section: Note the moments in this history where language ‘grain’ and materiality are more central than conventional language ‘communication’.
Suggest what happens when Martin attempts to push these techniques out of a self-consciously artistic or literary world into more mainstream productions.
Speculate on what this does to assumptions about editing and attachments to ‘truth’ in conventional non-fiction audio programming.
Section 4: Close analysis of Martin’s work
Using the tools of textual analysis and close listening, unpick what is going on at the level language in Martin’s projects LINEbreak, Engaged and Before Words.
Report from a focus group which listens to samples of Radio Radio along side the more conventional arts interview programme Front Row.
Perform close listenings on other contemporary audio programmes that have similar and different approaches to both seamless and self-consciously digital editing techniques. Point out any connections and deviations.