Modulation #32 (Indrayudh Sengupta)

MODULATIONS ON THE FLY is a series of resonances in sound, art, and philosophy that presents student works of Petra Klusmeyer's »SnRC« (Sound and Research-Creation) project at HfK Bremen.

»Creating Community through Commodity«

by Indrayudh Sengupta

This audio essay investigates the socio-economic dimensions of karaoke as a globally popular leisure activity through the theoretical lens of sonic theories, interwoven with personal experience. Exploring how the structural rules of karaoke foster ritual participation and community formation through the consumption and reproduction of commodified music, the work experiments with the medium of audio itself. Pop songs are appropriated to vocalize theoretical ideas, generating a mode of knowledge dissemination that diverges from written scholarship and resonates with Kenneth Goldsmith’s experiments in singing theoretical texts.