As I was not able to attend classes this week due to illness (with only Ruben from our group being able to attend), but I was able to get a run down from what I had missed so that I can catch up. I had missed a Radio Workshop, where I would have been able to trial broadcasting to a DIY radio station set up in the session, which was broadcasted to and listened to in groups to apply previously discussed ideas of radio’s aesthetic qualities and what effect that the medium has on the voice of the broadcaster.
As I was not there in person, I got some videos from the session from Jude which gave me a good idea of the listening experience, the acousmatic nature of the sound being seperated from the source adds more of a dramatic nature to what is being said, turning conversation into a performance through the disconnected nature of listening without being able to engage. In a later session (going back to this blog post later) I got to see a transmitter being used by another group to see for myself how this would be done, with it being suprisingly straightforward to broadcast music to a radio using one of those devices.
The naturally dramatised nature of radio can be something to take into account when developing our piece, thinking about how that idea can be exploited to make more impactful art and ways more banal sound sources and topics can be made more dramatic, with the basis of our piece being focused on the banal anyway, using radio conventions to our advantage of exaggerated vocal delivery and near cartoonish sound effects.
With the accessability of this technology seemingly being near trivial, it also opens up some opportunities to experiment with buying a transmitter myself and seeing what can be done with my own personal work using the medium, maybe as a means of blending controlled sounds with those controlled elsewhere and how that could be used as a technique later. It also brings into mind that there are many different ways to listen using the radio, and through broadcasting you are playing to an audience that might be listening passively, intently, through a small cheap radio or a hi-fi system, through headphones on a web-player, through car speakers, all of these being uncontrollable by the broadcaster, which might make attaching suggested listening methods for the audience to have more control a nice idea, or possibly just rolling with the indefinite nature, either way is nice.