One of my favorite things to do in the summer is sit on my porch, in a rocking chair and watch a thunderstorm. This is a pretty accurate depiction of what that sounds like:
Audio Assignments 70âSound Effects Story (3 stars) presented the challenge to tell a story using only sound effects, no verbal communication. The instructions dictated that I use at least 5 sounds and be no longer than 90 seconds long.
Using Freesound.org, I located sounds I could use including a door opening and closing, windchimes, a rocking chair, thunder and rain tracks, and of course, a bottle opening! Importing them into Audicity, I layered and looped some of the track, assembling them to create an audio image of a peaceful evening spent rocking on the porch with a drink watching and listening to the thunderstorm.
I recorded this clip during the last moments of my 2 hour commute home from work, as I entered the driveway, shut off the car, gathered my things, and put my feet down in my Home Sweet Home. Used the SoundCloud app on my iPhone to record and upload this task in a matter of moments. Nothing special here, no editing…just simple account of my arrival home after a long day away.
For this image, we were visiting the river and marveling at the rushing muddy water when I spotted the Candian geese on the “island” in the middle of the rapids. This photo is taken at 100% size, no zoom or special alterations. Unless you are looking for them you could easily miss these river visitors, taking a rest.
I must admit the photo/visual assignments are my favorite and I’m sure you’ll see more of them from me during the next few weeks, savoring the break from the audio and video world to enjoy a little photography!
In preparation for our collaborative radio show to be broadcast, I created a bumper to be broadcast on ds106radio as a teaser to get an audience tuned in July 3 @ 9pm EST.Â
This bumper was not too complicated to do. I wanted use clipped words and phrases, paired with appropriate music to portray the dire situation at hand. I listed the words and phrases that come to mind when I think of âzombie apocalypseâ and feelings it might incur. After choosing my words and phrases to describe a zombie apocalypse and the underlying tone of my own segment, I selected Metallicaâs Welcome Home (Sanitarium) as the musical accompaniment. Cropping it to a section of music and lyrics I deemed most fitting, I merged it with my voice track in Audacity and there you have it.
Hope it entices you to tune in to our (Group 2) show on ds106radio, July 3 @Â 9pm EST!
**Special thanks to my group members (Mike Berta, Ben Harwood, Kevin Murphy, Ciara Norquist, and John Johnston) for their creative contributions in making this show awesome, especially Mike Berta, who so generously volunteered to host and had to suffer my tardiness related to our very real, local “Post-Derecho” apocalyptic power outages and struggles. Thanks everyone!
Everything is free now
That’s what they say
Everything I ever done
Gonna give it away
Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if it doesn’t pay
— Gillian Welch, “Everything Is Free”
Don’t hate me, Gillian Welch.
Not that I’ve ripped off anything from you yet. But at the rate I’m going and since you’re one of my all-time faves — it can’t be long. In my first music remix for my DS106 radio segment, I “borrowed” work from a Karoke orchestra’s version of Summertime, Mamas and Pappas, and Pat Metheny.
I’ve always taken a hard line on copyright and fair use issues with my grad students, believing that they are the last defense for their students to learn to respect the intellectual property of others and their own. One memorable gray area was when Scott used the Beatles’ recording of “Eleanor Rigby” as the soundtrack for his video response (bookcast) to Laurie Halse Anderson’s Winter Girls. He really liked the connection he saw between the anorexic protagonist in Anderson’s novel and Eleanor’s loneliness.
But I thought that he was not using the song in a transformative manner, so advised against. Then he came back with his own rendition of the song that he played on his guitar and recorded. I still think he was wrong to use the piece; the song is not his intellectual property even if he plays it. And I don’t think it’s integral to his piece. Sometimes I worry that we take the easy way out and use popular songs because listeners tend to respond to those faster when we could do a better job if we used our craft to tell our story.
Yet, I’m a huge fan of Pogo of Perth with his unique style of remixing films (most famously, Disney and Pixar films), creating music using syllables, notes, chords, and sound effects only from the movies. His work is transformative, I would argue, and he adds a special value for the public that didn’t exist before.
So in creating my piece for my cabin’s DS106 radio show, I appropriated up to 30 seconds from the Mamas and the Papas’s “Dancing in the Streets” and Pat Metheny’s “Letters from Home” plus a few seconds from a Karoke version of “Summertime.” How do I feel? Surprisingly, confident that I did nothing wrong and I don’t think it’s rationalization.
The music was integral to the storytelling — not something I chose because it was pretty or I liked it. In each case, the music “chose” me because it was referred to by my those who participated in my inquiry. So is it transformative? You know, I actually think so because I do think I remix music and neuroscience research to share some pretty interesting findings.
Would my piece pass the YouTube test if I uploaded it there? Well, probably not. That’s why I think the work done by Larry Lessig and others in helping us understand that copyright laws need to change to reflect the “art” that we can create today using digital tools. It’s way past due. The only approved uses included in Section 107, US Copyright Law are those of “criticism, comment, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.” Art that doesn’t fit in those categories is ignored. Tim Wu does a laudable job of helping us frame our questions for this digital era.
In the spirit that “learning should be free for all,” I’ve lobbied for all of the work I develop for online teaching to be free for all — those seeking accreditation pay while those interested in learning for learning’s sake pay nothing. So far, North Carolina State University and the professional associations I’ve developed online courses for have agreed.
But as a free-lancer, I still grapple with how to license the work that I do that is not commissioned. Stories like Alec Couros’s encourage me that there may be good reason to opt for the CC-NC-SA. Ultimately, I’m with Gillian — I’m going to create anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.
I was inspired to create a poster to highlight the Open Educational Resources (OER) and Creative Commons connection. It was the first time I’d attempted to use GIMP to cut and insert objects so I learned a lot. I’ve still much to learn about being precise and smoothing the edges after cutting. I also explored the use of multiple typefaces which has always seemed pretty scary to me. It’s sort of like matching plaids and florals — tricky but effective when done well. In this case, I followed the advice I’d read and used a sans serif title and a serif message that reflected the roundness of the Creative Commons typeface. Would love any feedback on whether or not it works.
“This is the week for your major audio storytelling collaborative project â a group radio show. This is not something you should leave for the end of the week!”
Oh how I should have heeded those words! Since I was busy attending the ISTE 2012 conference last week, I didn’t do a thing about this audio assignment until July 1. I decided that I would follow the suggestion and do something about the morning after the edu-apocalypse.
If I had more time, I would have added a movie announcer voice intro and autotuned some of the speeches. The fact that my radio show about creativity was not very creative was not lost on me! Maybe another day…This was my first real audio assignment and I really enjoyed it. On the plus side, maybe I can use this as the introduction to my workshop on Teaching and Learning later this week!
How I Created This
It took me forever to figure out how to get the audio from a You Tube video onto my computer. After trying numerous applications that didn’t really work, I realized that there was a Firefox Add-on that would do just the trick!
I added the Easy YouTube Video Downloader Add-on to my Firefox browser. So every time I go to YouTube, the downloader button is present.
This Add-on allows you to determine one of several different file types for your download:
As long as my internet connection was good (i.e. when no one was streaming the Euro2012 soccer final!) then the download was smooth and relatively quick.
I downloaded the audio from two of the ISTE 2012 keynote presentations as well as another Ken Robinson Ted Talk about creativity. I then downloaded the theme music from a 70′s science fiction movie.
I then used Audacity to select sections of the speeches and music to piece them together into one 5 minute presentation.
A ds106 assignment that intrigued me was Newspaper Blackout Poetry. It’s a three star assignment and that seemed excessive to me, at first. Turns out, it is pretty challenging.
I looked at several articles and tried to plan out some possibilities. I actually wanted to avoid this one because it seemed to serious, too raw, too painful. But in the end it was the one that worked best for me.
Here’s the original article:
Here’s the poem once I blacked out a bunch of words.
rape
weeping
seething
harrowing
not usual
critical pain
And with that emotional end, I wrap up the visual assignments piece (a tad late, but it’s done!).
The audio assignments for ds106 have intimidated me a bit more than the design or visual assignments. As a result, I started with Poetry Reading because it didn’t scare me as much as others. This poem, The Country, by Billy Collins is one of my all time favorites.
My apologies for my lack of interaction recently with ds106. I’ve been overwhelmed with a second camp that I’ve just started at. I’m short on free time and can’t seem to manage my time between work, Medical Ethics (Phil 226), and MacGuffin.
These next few days are going to be crunch-time. I’ve made a schedule for myself to guarantee that I don’t fall behind again. It’s so hard to stay on top of things when you have so many things to stay on top of.
We are in Radio week, it’s a follow up of Audio week.
First we had to accomplish two daily creates. The first daily create I worked on was to record an “ambient” noise in the location I was sitting in. I was, at the time, in my room. I was playing music, talking to Kobe the dog, and typing away. This is what it sounds like…
The second daily create was to take a picture of something hidden in the image. In moms bathroom there is a window. For the first time in a long time I pulled up the curtain and behold was a empty birds nest. This birds nest was most likely there all Spring and into the early Summer but was hidden away because of the curtain. In the image itself it is pretty clear that there is an empty birds nest. But the point it is something small but amazing was hidden and kept a secret for so long.
DS106 has formed into groups to create a radio show for the DS106 radio station! We have five minute segments and must create our own radio bumper. The group I’m in decided to do interesting places in general or that we have travelled to around the world. I thought it would be fun to talk about my travels to Vietnam and China. However since there are so many things to talk about when traveling to exotic places and stories to tell, I thought I would narrow down on a particular part of the trip.
Vietnam:
Mom sent me over there for the cultural experience to teach English and Photography to elementary school children. What an experience that was. With only a five minute segment I was a bit broad about Vietnam and what it was like. I focused on a few different things, the house I stayed in, getting sick, and the experience with the school children. I mixed in different noises such as a horn honking and rain pounding.
China:
There were so many stories to tell about this place. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and so hard to determine what to talk about. The food, interaction with locals, traveling to rural areas… it was endless. I decided to talk about my visit to the Great Wall of China. It was surreal and magical. It felt like you travelled back in time and maybe even to another planet. I would give anything to go back there. I included music and  noises within the story itself.
Next Week is Video Week, but as you know I will be in Lake Tahoe! Hopefully I catch up and learn all about the wonders of video.
I edited my sounds and story telling together by using Garage Band. It’s completely straight forward and I would suggest it to anyone who is new to audio editing!
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
