Blackbird Archive
← v10n1, Spring 2011
Gallery · Volume 10, Number 1

Mother of Invention

Jeff Porter

Mother of Invention

I recently put together a sound collage on Hiroshima, Oppenheimer, and the bomb. It’s a fifteen minute found-sound piece that reconstructs the beginning of the cold war from fragments of sound and culminates with the stunning survival narrative of Takuo Matsumoto. Though the topic is a bit grim, The collage portrays history as an imaginary space where sound collides with language.

Imagine Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History turning the radio dial.

Mother of Invention

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Jeff Porter

Jeff Porter is the author of the memoir Oppenheimer Is Watching Me (University of Iowa Press, 2007). His essays appear in Antioch Review , Isotope, Northwest Review , Shenandoah , Missouri Review , Hotel Amerika , Wilson Quarterly , Contemporary Literature , among other journals. With Patricia Foster, he is co-editor of Understanding the Essay , forthcoming from Broadview Press. Porter is an Associate Professor in English at the University of Iowa.