Author: cquest

After reading Marinna Guzy’s essay on soundscapes, and after listening to the audio in the article, my perspective shifted in how I interpret sound and the environment in which it exists. This is more or less what a soundscape is, the environment in which a collection of sounds exist and ideally harmonize. I began to think about this as a painting of sorts. Paintings, like soundscapes, each have traits that define the confined strokes, or in the case of soundscapes, sounds. All of these different components that make a whole painting or a whole soundscape clash with each other or harmonize with each other, there is rarely an in between in my eyes. So, soundscapes, like paintings, books, television shows, and movies are the culmination of different sensory inputs from the environment you are in. Your eyes can tell a visual story and feelings can be had within that. Your ears can also tell a story, but a story of sounds, which can evoke different feelings.

In high school I played basketball all four years (five if you include eighth grade). Every single year, every practice, every game, every meeting in the background I heard the basketball hoops clicking and clanking around, whether or not they were being raised or lowered is irrelevant. They always did this. Thinking of a soundmark example did not take me long because I still remember the distinct click and rattling. Sure, there were other sounds like squeaky sneakers, basketballs bouncing, and people shooting, but this was a constant, uninterruptible sound that is a perfect example of a soundmark.

Ultimately, Marinna opened my eyes and ears to thinking about the whole environment of sound at once, as a soundscape. For me this includes background noise like humming or any machinery that might be working.

For this first podcast assignment we were asked to interview one of our classmates. I was able to interview my new classmate, Kayleigh Duncan about her interests, why she is in Topics in Digital Storytelling, and a couple of other things. I used a guided set of questions provided by Professor Cripps to conduct my interview with Kayleigh. The inquiries were surface-level in their depth, but thankfully Kayleigh and I were able to expand on each other’s questions and responses with more questions and additional information to supplement the baseline questions.

Thank you to Kayleigh for allowing me to interview her, and thank you to freesound.org for the free audio that helped my project run more smoothly!

Feel free to listen to the episode below!

To me, this prompt was very open-ended, especially after listening to the example on the assignment page. The task was to pick a location and to venture through it to show someone or something around. I saw this as an opportunity to introduce my cats to a beach that they would never get to see. They probably will not get to experience any beach other than their litter box, actually. A less risky and more straight-froward idea did come to my mind where I would have chosen my mom as the audience, but I thought it would be more funny to talk to my pets.

I chose a simple location on purpose. I felt that if I chose something more significant and complex that I would try and cram too much information into the alotted time for this podcast, which would make it less interesting in my opinion. That being said, I may take a more serious route come the next playground assignment, just to see what the differences are in the two approaches. All in all, this was a very relaxing and quick project to put together. Looking forward to the next!

Any given medium of communication is unique. When I watch a television show I am internalizing the audio and video components at the same time, with a podcast just the audio (generally speaking). When I read a book I am only using my eyes, but when I watch the movie made from the book I am using my eyes and ears. I believe that these simple distinctions are massively important in understanding how people receive and digest information.

For instance, books are imaginary landscapes that grow and evolve as you turn the pages. You can rely on your own knowledge and imagination to carry you through the story that the book is telling, but you only see the picture of the story that you have created in your mind. Television on the other hand creates that picture for you and tells the visual story that you would have created yourself otherwise. It’s less mental work to watch television compared to reading a book. We imagine things differently when we have the opportunity to create part of the story ourselves.

Podcasts are a little different. To me, they are often conversations about a particular topic and almost always about that topic exclusively andt hey are not always story based. With the lack of video of most podcasts, you only get the audible conversation piece. This allows for someone to focus more closely on the actual information being communicated without becoming distracted by any sort of visual. That’s my opinion at least. Ultimately, I believe that the more the medium does for you, the less work you have to do and the less fulfilling the experience is as a human.

The message in the medium of podcasting is simple. It is to connect people who know about things to people who want to know about those things. The message is clear and straightforward, unlike other types of media and mass media.