Listcast
This is new media composition:
Three Days Dead
Three Days Dead
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February 26, 2006
February 24, 2006
Podcast Lab Report
I'm posting a podcast of a discussion held today about the state of technology in our media lab here at UNC. I spoke with Stephanie Morgan, the Assistant Director or the lab, about things we have been working on this year. My most striking observation has to do with the ways that support structures have tended more toward the baseline infrastructure that facilitates ubiquitous computing. Our campus shifted to a laptop requirement through the Carolina Computing Initiative which rolled out in 2000. Since then, I have felt a palpable shift in resource availability and the result has been a mixed bag whereby we can count on having new baseline computers everywhere, but not much more because most of the resources get sucked up into the ubiquity. I won't carry on about it, but should say that the ubiquitous access model alone can be limiting.One other observation: Stephanie and I sat down for the podcast after I turned over the idea of writing yet another progress report and snapshot of our technology efforts. With the three or so blank word processor pages and a set of points to make staring me in the face, I decided it would be easier to just record a conversation and make the points that way. It took about two hours to record and then clean up. Maybe a wash, but the impulse not to type and instead record was undeniable.
Timed photography
This page documents family snapshots taken every June seventeenth for the past 30 years. What a fascinating idea. My reaction is that not only do I see time, and its passage, captured in the images, I sense a kind of background noise that echoes all the daily moments of a life and family. The sense is more than likely driven in part by projection. I have no way of knowing how their days played out, but I imagine them through the yearly snapshots.
February 22, 2006
Podcast Drafts
From the latest batches, a couple of draft podcasts. both of these adjust the assignment.
The Case of the Missing Meaning uses a mystery metaphor to consider ways of learning to read poetry. Jennifer Kling explains in some of the
brainstorming The reason we decided on this idea is because really, it seems like a good way to think of how one ought to go about explicating poetry--if you think of it as a mystery to be solved, you're more likely to get somewhere because you're open to more possibilities.I really like the way the podcast puts the poem into play through the responses of the interviewees--takes it down a notch and moves the story along. It's also nice how the project takes the teaching, rather than reading, poetry angle. I like that. We ended up having to splice in the clips after the live recording session.
The second podcast, Greenlaw Poets, works more as a community snapshot, capturing a current slice of what is happening in the building with faculty poets. Again, the clips woven into the podcast, in this case poetry readings, give it oomph. Zach Jepson added the clips and audio post-recording.
We're realizing that podcasts open lots of questions about intellectual property. In Greenlaw Poets, for instance, Jim Seay reads the poem “Flat Out in 5/4 Time” with "Take Five" in the background. Jepson reports that Seay wrote the poem with the song in mind
He was inspired by a Paul Desmond performance. It’s an unusual piece because it is done with a five/four time signature and it’s a little bit defiant. And because of that he purposely wrote the poem with iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter lines.During the reading, Seay plays the song in the background the entire time--it is a live performance using a copyrighted work. We have incorporated that into the podcast. If you listen to Seay's reading, and to Jepson's explanation of the relationship between the two works, you get a sense for why it seems completely appropriate to insert the reading.
February 19, 2006
Some Freewriting About Future Projects
As I contemplate whether and perhaps how to embark on a new textbook project,
I imagine how a new text might embody my current thinking about teaching and
the pushing of writing. A new text would have to sing the social turn and new
media. A new text would have to pour forth on the second Web. A new text would
have to pour forth with headphones filling spaces between my ears. That’s
the ticket to the new textbook ride, a rhythm bumping behind the concentrated
raking forward of assignments, exercises, and texts. Work with it, the rhythm.
The wetter pieces will be media layered over and into the instruction, the pieces
themselves new media compositions to turn the crank on new media composition.The book will be beautiful. It must be. Books are. But the shape’s the question. Moldy modes of discourse? Arguments? Topics? Themes? No matter. The rhythm will drive it. The book will flow and projects will shape it. Projects like the playlist or the collage. Projects brought forth on the second Web with lots of samples, ideas, and revisions of writers (students). Labels and categories must swirl colorfully into the mix. Making new things. The rhythm behind. No ideas but in tags? Rhythm things? Flowing always through the teaching surfaces of the project must be projects.
And it always must be ready to ask the audience, “How you feeling?” “Is this thing on?” Pfwhheeaaaa. Pfwhhuueaa. Not just while building the book, but while building from the book. Teach to build, and build to teach. The project is cranking on teaching, and that will happen outside of the three-year cycle of current textbook production. Dates must guide groups and mark time, but rolling out the teaching will pace with the rhythm of the years. Fall. Winter. Spring. Summer off? Summer off. This is a textbook manifesto from a writing pusher.
Don’t doubt that there will be some layering of deeply dabbled new media mixtures. Visual. Yes, very. Texts. Yes, the word. Yes, Yes, the word. Audio. Absolutely. Music matters more than we’ve realized in the classroom. Sing. Play. Listen and sing. And touch. Let's not forgot writing moves the body just as the body moves the word, even through cyberspace. Paintbrush. Shadow. Filter. Print. Push. Push. Push.
February 13, 2006
Desktop Detritus
February 12, 2006
live podcasting
For the most part, I'm learning steadily how to put on live podcasts. I'm wondering about both created-from-scratch podcasts made using an audio editor as a composition space and podcasts performed and recorded live. The from-scratch thinking will have to wait for other postings, but I can say that the live versions clearly expedite the creation process, limiting the process to more or less the capture and cleanup of the audio file. For group projects, the live model can be planned and performed in three, maybe two class periods.
On another level, these live podcasts open avenues for pushing writing. The most comfortable participants include both those who have caught up their expertise on the topic and those who establish a relaxed and confident delivery. Having information at hand is crucial. Performance matters. A conversational tone works. Weaving in media clips is hard; they can disrupt the flow. The first try is often stilted and needs tweaking. Familiar assignments may or may not adapt to the medium; the research report/radio show models strike me as less "grippy" than the free flowing weekly report formats we have tried. The collaboration and engagement facilitated by the assignments is quite grippy.
Technically, our goal is not impeccable production values, but clearly audible speaking and minimal background noise; on our last effort we came up short with an irritating echo that in part stems from (I think) our efforts to allow listeners in the room to hear the audio clips we are playing in the podcast. We'd love any advice about cleaning that up.
Finally, a bit of information about the setup we are using. We have an Alesis usb mixing board ($149) and two phantom powered microphones. The key piece that we discovered for doing the live podcasts is incorporating audio clips into the mix using a splitter cable from the laptop headphone jack that then feeds into the mixing board. Then, by opening audio files in separate quicktime windows we can play clips at key points in the podcast. The mixing board allows the audio files to be faded in or out and the result is blended into the overall stream that is recorded (in this case, using Audacity). It just takes a few tries to get the feel for weaving in the pre-recorded snippets and the result is a recording that is pretty close to being ready to post once the session is over.
February 08, 2006
Sample Rate Screencast
I've been working on my screencasting skills and am almost to the point where it is easier to record instructions than to create full-blown handouts. Since we'll be doing podcasts in the next few weeks in my new media literature course as well as in our studio, I'll try to post a few tutorials that might come in handy. These are free for anyone to use. The screencast here is a brief tutorial on changing the sample rate of snippets pasted into Audacity (Flash required).The screencast is made with Camtasia on the PC. I find it easier and better-sounding to record the audio using iMovie. So, I record on the PC and save as an avi file, then bring that to the Mac to record the audio in iMovie, then send it back to the PC as a wav file that can then be imported back into Camtasia for the final print of the tutorial. Composing using Camtasia, for me, involves a process in which one sketches out a model project while thinking along the way about how to capture the screens necessary to demonstrate the most important steps. I find it to be an odd herky jerky version of writing and teaching blended together. One tries to imagine voice-overs and advice to writers, while winding one's way through the composition of the sample project.
What I haven't been able to do in making screencasts is develop a clear sense of how to integrate voice or style into the compositions. Although the idea in the more teacherly screencasts is to layer rhetorical instruction over the technical steps depicted on screen, the ethos is one of informative technology tutor and not much else. Perhaps that sense of speaker is appropriate, but it makes me wonder about recent conversations and postings by Bradley Dilger and on if:book about voice and authorship. I wonder how much these concerns of voice are amplified as one actually records voice, and then (ugh!) plays it back. At some point, I'd like to experiment with a narrative screencast or perhaps with some other form.
February 07, 2006
Podcast Assignment
We've got lots of podcast work coming up in my courses for the next two weeks, so I'll make a link to the latest class assignment. I've done something like this before with decent results, but this time I'm going to really try to get the steps down for the live podcast recording sessions. We've been working on getting a recording rig set up in our instructional technology studio using microphones, mixing board, and audacity. I will post some information about the conceptual set up and some of the equipment shortly.
In the meantime, here is a link to what could prove valuable for the groups about to conduct their recordings: some tips from Strongbad about how best to do a radio show. I hadn't thought to include pointers in the assignment to concepts like the voice/appearance mismatch, but . . .
February 04, 2006
seeing feeling sound
A moment of synthesis prompted by listening to a podcast
draft posted by Jennifer Edbauer arose as I was poking around the LOC
prints and photographs collection. I ran into this picture of sound made
visible. The LOC only has a thumbnail online, so I googled up the larger version
at a site called Privateline.com.
This tidbit resonated with questions I have about phenomenological composing--feeling
and moving, physically as we write.
Sound waves are acoustic waves, with no electrical component. They are simply vibrations in the air, a physical pressure made by the utterance of the speaker.
I love that phrase, "physical pressure made by the utterance of the speaker."
We tend to translate movement wrought through discourse into abstract terms--changing
the views of listeners, prompting written response, shifting policy--intellectual
reactions to the linguistic core of the statement. The image and blockquote
suggest other possibilities.
If you'll permit a bit of hurdy gurdy digression ("The association . . . is obvious, since both are played with [by] a crank"*), I'll display another image from the Privateline site. The inference is that waves roll meta through the spaces of the universe, so that our own small disturbances given voice never work in a vacuum but mix with the invisible rhythm of the waves all around.
Visible light is only one small part of the omnipresent electromagnetic field or spectrum, that great, universal energy force that constantly washes over and through us.
I can only vouch for myself in saying that word writing (and reading), when
it's good, taps into the wave world in a physical way. But I can suppose that
sound writing offers a variation on the phenomenon, perhaps one less removed than silent text
from physical waves (primordial or other).
And, as a last digression, I'll argue
with this image--which may
or may not
depict the disruption of sound visually.
February 03, 2006
tube music
This piece called Going underground from Guardian Unlimited: Culture Vulture describes how Dorian Lynskey adapted an image of the London underground designed by Harry Beck to map musical connections. What strikes me is the method: beginning with crayons and four sheets of paper. Lynskey describes the project as one of exploring the mapping possibilities for networks,It's an experiment to see if one intricate network can be overlaid on a completely different one. The elegance and logic of Harry Beck's design - its combination of bustling intersections, sprawling tributaries, long, slanting tangents and abrupt dead ends, all sucked into the overturned wine bottle of the Circle Line - seems to spark other connections and appeal to the brain's innate desire for patterning and structure.Without dwelling on how innate a patterning desire might be for us or how approrpriate the tube image works as a meta map (or how well the project captures the musical connections), grabbing crayons tells me that there is still something physical, phenomenological, about sorting and labeling. That is, the more complex the task, the more friendly and usable are the simplest tools.
February 01, 2006
Three Days Dead
Writing along, though turning in the assignment late, I offer up my playlist designed to create a narrative. The songs are canonical, mostly; touchstones of comfortable sounds, recognizable pieces. The prose could Three Days Dead
"One Tree Hill" U2 (lyrics)
The story begins today, steeped in references to our shared memories. The black center of The Heart of Darkness and the songs of folk found in Jara’s music trick us into thinking these are only our struggles. But the tale leans back, archetypal, toward the symbolic scene.
"Babylon" David Gray (lyrics)
Three days bind the story. Its deeper movement starts with anticipation. An eager descent softened by hope:
Friday night I'm going nowhere / All the lights are changing green to red
A blessed mistake.
Only wish that you were here
You know I'm seeing it so clear
I've been afraid
To tell you how I really feel
Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made
The long passage back.
Turning back for home
You know I'm feeling so alone
I can't believe
Climbing on the stair
I turn around to see you smiling there
In front of me
"Sympathy For The Devil" The Rolling Stones (lyrics; Salon piece)
This big picture plays out in close up, the curtains rich burgundy, velvet and deep as blood. Not fabric, but membrane screen image flickering as grey light comes up from the back of a stage. The lit grey screen contracts into a tight circle and swings off stage to the woman, wracked. The light swings back, center stage. The dead.
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)
The dead shimmer as the man extends his arms and gathers them, shapelike, collecting them like clouds dissipating in summer sun. He breathes deep. Looks off stage. The light dilates, brightens, and swings with his gaze, highlighting the woman. Her face is framed at the bottom by fingers, steepled over lips. Eyes closed with thought. Brow set, wrinkled. He looks to the light. Turns.
"In The Garden" Van Morrison (lyrics)
The streets are always wet with rain
After a summer shower when I saw you standin'
In the garden in the garden wet with rainYou wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow
As we watched the petals fall down to the ground
And as I sat beside you I felt the
Great sadness that day in the garden
His fingers curl over the back of her hand. Nerves race up his side and fire up his face. He radiates. She breathes, opens her eyes. He’s fixed. She too.
And as it touched your cheeks so lightly
Born again you were and blushed and we touched each other lightly
And we felt the presence of the ChristAnd I turned to you and I said
No Guru, no method, no teacher
Just you and I and nature
And the father in the garden
The man awakens. He stretches, expectant. Remembering the garden. Sunday. Ascendance. The morning light warms the side of his face. Questions. The circle of light surrounding him on the empty stage expands and all around him the dead. He squints toward the sky. The morning sun makes no sense. Three days and still he sits among bankers, butchers, mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, the lost souls of the darkened world. Sunday’s past and something’s wrong: “They call it stormy Monday but Tuesday’s just as bad.”
"Stormy Monday" Eva Cassidy (lyrics)
"Black" Pearl Jam (lyrics)
The sadness smacks personal and profound. Lured by pain and beauty to betray the world, he feels now the loss and fingers at his own soul like a sore, remembering. That joining. That giving, that, allowed just an instant, instantly changed forever.
And now my bitter hands shake beneath the clouds
of what was everything?
Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black--
tattooed everything.
"Pacing the Cage" Bruce Cockburn (lyrics)
Reflection comes much later and brings with it nothing more than the slow turn of the proverbial screw. The unjust judge and the pearl of great price. He wanders the timescapes of the past, stepping into this very present. The rusted ships, scuttled on distant shores and waiting to turn to scrap. The lights of cities, biting and empty in their brilliance. The thrum of the engine soundtracked beneath the song of the lark. He wonders aloud, how is it that you’re just now “finding yourself in a place that you've willingly waltzed into. Suddenly, you realize it's not such a good place to be, and it's hard to find your way out, hard to know where the next step is supposed to go.”
"All Along The Watchtower" Bob Dylan (lyrics)
Swiveling days compile their despondencies and urgent little victories. An adoption in Armenia. Plundering in Mertz. A library in Egypt. A Caldera vaporizes a village. A man has a dream. Resigned, he turns toward each event, draping shawls over corpse and cold soul alike. Lowering and lifting to the timeless rhythm of the rise and fall. More, he finally cries. I now need nothing more.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
"Across The Universe" The Beatles (lyrics)
The sound of horse’s hooves rises from the edge of the stage in clops like gentle rain. The ebbing and flowing circle of light that baths the man swells to full brightness and the two riders join the scene—the woman and the father, smiling. Musical feet fill the gaps as the horses stop, and with each beat figures step on the stage. Teachers. Farmers. Runners. Writers. Young and old, they step forward like members of a choir and mouth the sounds that change the world.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
"With or Without You" (live) U2 (lyrics)
As the crowd gathers on stage, another sound swells from behind. A whistle. Clap. Clap. Whistle. Clap. Looking out he sees more souls pouring in from doorways and climbing down from the rafters. The days, he understands, have nothing to do with the scattered sequences of noon and night. The days instead have played out over these millennia in each ragged cough and lover’s cry. Three days dead, he understands he’s not alone and he “give[s himself] away”
My hands are tied
My body bruised, she's got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to loseAnd you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away
She takes his hand. The sound turns smoky and swirls over the scene. It surrounds the man and the woman and slowly lifts them, as if on filaments of thought, invisible and rising skyward.
We'll shine like stars in the silver light
We'll shine like stars in the Christmas night
One heart. One home. One love.
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