Audio Flux Circuit 08 Confection: New Shapes
Mette Post Riggelsen (DK 2026)
3min
Is a broken heart and hot candy mixture anything like molten tin?
Produced by: Mette Post Riggelsen
TRANSCRIPT
We were supposed to go to a party together tonight. The invitations arrived six months ago. Before he left. Now I’m sitting alone in the summer house, looking out at the sea as I sink deeper into the sofa. The power keeps going out. I feel easily dissolvable, diffuse. The summer heatwaves and loneliness have made me jellyfish-like. Maybe eventually I’ll just seep out as a puddle right here between the cushions. I fall asleep and dream of invertebrate sea creatures.
When I wake up, I put on my swimsuit and run out into the cold waves. Later, I walk down to the harbour to get an ice cream. Not because of the weather, but because of habit.
Ice cream guy: Hello
Mette: Hi.
Ice cream guy: What’s up?
Mette: I can see you’re closed.
Ice cream guy: Yes, we’re closed. We’ve lost… we’ve lost all our power, so we don’t have any ice cream or anything interesting to keep the place open for.
Mette: Okay, is it the thunderstorm?
Ice cream guy: Yes, it’s the thunderstorm.
Mette: Okay… Is it completely melted, or what?
Ice cream guy: Yes, all our ice cream has melted.
Mette: Oh shit, what now?
Ice cream guy: Well, we’re just closing. We’re shutting down for today.
Mette: Okay, can it just - can the ice cream be used again?
Ice cream guy: No, no, they’re down in the sewer now.
I picture it - blackcurrant sorbet, pistachio, chocolate, raspberry - colourful masses flowing downward through dirty pipes.
Ice cream guy: It’ll be okay.
Mette: It’ll be okay.
Then I notice a shelf on the other side of the counter, filled with homemade hard candies in every colour imaginable. I let my fingers glide over the jars.
Ice cream guy: The lime one is good.
Mette: This one?
Ice cream guy: Then there’s the liquorice one with salmiak - that one’s good.
Mette: How do you make them?
Ice cream guy: Well, you heat it up and pour it out onto the table.
I imagine the hot candy mixture as molten tin, hardening instantly when poured into cold water. But the warped, twisted candy shapes I see in my mind look nothing like the neat cylinders in the jars in front of me. And I wonder whether my obsession with jumping into cold water is about making sure I retain my own solid form.
Audio Flux is a home for short-form, innovative audio. They invite people far and wide to create short “fluxworks” in response to a theme and set of prompts.
For Circuit 08, each fluxwork needed to:
Respond to the theme “Confection”
Last three minutes on the dot
Include a conversation with someone who you don’t know yet, and who lives or works within one mile (or kilometer) of where you live or work.
Mention chocolate or another sweet treat.
Incorporate an audible sonic fluctuation inspired by the chocolate-tempering process of repeated heating and cooling. (See video ) This fluctuation may be conveyed through volume, pacing, tone, language… or something else entirely.
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