Sounds Like an Exquisite PPU Story

Sound is so critical and often underappreciated in media storytelling, but it’s often subtle- background sounds that provide a setting, the slam of a door or the gentle crunching of foot steps approaching a door.

Today’s message is via audio, the typical recording of me speaking, but consider how you might even tell a story in sound with no dialogue (check out an activity in the Make Bank).

I use a fun, free site for doing quick audio recording, right in the browser, in any device- Vocaroo. It’s simple, but it publishes directly to a web link you can use, and best of all- you do not need to make an account or even identify yourself.

For one creative challenge in your reflections this week, try making a recording of the sounds of where you are at a moment. Or make sounds to indicate where you are? Do ambient sounds generate a sense of place? Or just share something in a whisper. Try to be creative in using sound to express a reaction to this week’s activities.

I’ve added a bit of code to our site that will allow you to embed a Vocaroo published sound directly into your blog. My example is at the web address https://vocaroo.com/1bwZbAYKiPDU the part you want to copy is it’s “ID” or everything after that last slash or 1bwZbAYKiPDU.

First record and save your sound at Vocar00. In your post where you want the sound to appear, enter:

[vocaroo id="*****"]

where you replace the ***** with the ID part of your Vocaroo sound.

How does that sound, sound?

And Now, an Exquisite Corpse Way to Tell a Story

No dead bodies are around. But we will try in class (or after) a collaborative way of telling a story together with a twist.

Invented by surrealists in the early 1900s,  Exquisite Corpse was parlor game where a story was started on a piece of paper. The paper was folded so it only revealed the last sentence, and the next person adds to it. Each person in the room does the same thing, each building, adding to the story with a paragraph or two, but making it so the next person only has the last bit to jump off from.

We have an online version of the Exquisite Corpse game, where you can only see the last 150 characters of the previous contribution. Use that as a prompt to add text, a few sentences, or more.

For our story, we ask to write about the day to day experiences of students, teachers, employees at a Post Pandemic University. What is it like? What do they do? Who do the interact with? How? How does PPU life overlap with their daily lives?

Try it anytime below or directly at the site where it was built (we are not sure what might happen if in class you do this at the same time, but we are alchemists, we experiment!)

This was created in a web site called glitch, where it was remixed from one someone else created (see the project page)– a key aspect of internet art is this ability to build off of the work others have shared.

After class, we will make the story available.

Maybe use audio in your notes to share your experience?

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Exquisite Corpse flickr photo by Eden Hensley Silverstein shared under a Creative Commons (BY-ND) license