"Alchemy" Composition

“Alchemy” is based off of the short story The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft which is about a noble man living with his family curse which kills the head of the family at the age of 32 by some mysterious way. This piece is a type of sound collage built with recorded sounds of others reading the story, but by not having sounds that juxtapose to each other it is not truly a collage. “Alchemy” was created as the final project in Howard Sandroff’s “Master Class in Sound Art” at Columbia College Chicago. By creating a state of incoherence of the words that are spoken it detracts from the original short story, but by keeping some of the words somewhat audible allows to link the 2 pieces of arts together to compare too. The beginning section of the story was not used as it is not as exciting as the rest of the story and it is just setting the stage for the rest of the story. When the story is read it will be understood what is happening in the sound collage, but it isn’t necessary to read the short story. Being a sound collage, this is primarily a standalone piece that takes its main concept from the derived short story.