Microphone Check

This presentation reconfigures the role of recording technology within media investigative research. I perform a patchwork ethnography (Gökçe Günel et al) of a specific microphone via a performance lecture that aims to deconstruct and follow its elemental flow. Multimedia investigations must examine tools and technologies as part of an ecology of critical practice. It is vital to consider the medianatures (Parikka, 2012) implicated in the chain meaning-making; from microphones, cables, recording devices, SD cards, and batteries; to copper, neodymium, PVC, rubber, silicon, silver, gold, palladium, aluminium, zinc, manganese, and potassium. These are just some of the natural resources that facilitate digital investigations. What are the consequences of such entanglements? What are we not hearing when we grip the plastic casing of a microphone? What footprint is going unheard?