User:Wyn/Special Issue 25/WATER

1. Description

1.1 Prototype

We depicted our radio show as an exploration underwater, with three periods (also the structure of the radio show): water surfing, diving, and emerging. The confusion and questions (What is experimental? What is a protocol?) we encounter in this journey are like bubbles flowing underwater. The memes, songs, texts, audios, and music would be like bubbles emerging in our minds. During our group meeting, it was raining outside. Since the soundscape of Rotterdam was the last radio show's theme, I hoped this show would continue the audio journey from Rotterdam to somewhere else. Rotterdam is a canal city, so I came up with the idea of rivers. But our group members wanted abstracted the concept to water itself - it's everywhere and obvious, making it easy to find sound material. We still had not figured out how the sound board works, so we wanted to try TouchDesigner and TTS to make the sound play more fluidly.

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Water_radio_sound

1.2 Design

How can we feel water through audio? Which sounds can be performed? How do we structure the underwater scene? Our design explored several questions. It reminds me of Bruce Lee's famous speech, the ideology of water must be formless. Water's ability to transform into ice, steam, river, and various forms reflects our experimental methodology. We incorporated sounds of human-water interactions (swimming, breathing, showering). From Bruce Lee's speech to the solid material - river flowing, ice cracking, going through the specific word 'water' to the life cycle of water - evoking the feeling of experimentation from abstract to concrete. We collected different answers about two question that what's the protocal and experimental, their answers would be our material as well.

Sound Techniques:

A. Montage

  - Voice layering
  - Temporal juxtaposition
  - Rhythmic cutting

B. Sound Collage

  - TTS fragments
  - Environmental sounds
  - Musical elements

C. Sonic Overlapping

  - Multiple narratives
  - Cross-fading techniques
  - Spatial positioning

D. Resonance Effects

  - Spatial awareness
  - Depth perception

1.2.2 Material Composition

We selected some of speeches from internet, through various speeches related to water, exploring the thoughts and relationships between water and humans. As a narrative backbone, it might connect the concept of water together, it also play a role as a conceptual carrier, resonating the philosophical thought.

Soundscape is a spatial dimension, create a sense of space, expressing a environmental context, also make the acoustic reality.

Music add a emotional texture, making a tonal support.

1.2.3 Sound Sources(parts)

1."Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

Bruce Lee was not only a martial artist, but also a philosopher. His speech about the idea of water has turned into a meme nowadays. This speech reminds me of our experimental publishing - every form can be publishing material.

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2.Noorderhoofd, Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands - Sem Zeeman

- Noorderhoofd [51.98021° N, 4.11153° O] through the ears of its aquatic- and surrounded wildlife, adapted to the petrochemical industries and cargo shipping.

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3.Hermeto Pascoal - Música da Lagoa

Snippet of the 1985 movie "Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira", by Ricardo Lua a documentary made to draw attention to the plight of Parque Estadual do Alto da Ribeira (High Creek State Park), a park near the southern border of São Paulo state. The park represented some of the last wild remnants of the Atlantic rain forest in the south. As with the Amazon forest in northern Brazil, the park’s boundaries were under constant pressure from the steady encroachment of civilization. Hermeto loved the idea and, in his usual manner, decided to compose and perform all the music within the park itself.

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4.Transforming sound

Under water bubble sound Ice cracking sound Ocean Waves Heavy running stream ... ...

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Feedback

Since the water soundscape was too simple, the audiences thought it was like a toliet radio.

Thought

The real underwater sound was not so intense and more potential possibility, there are multiple layers that shows the depth and movement of the water. TTS and the editing did not good enough, we can improve the layering techniques and enhance the sound editing, merge and separate different elements, make the better integration of elements, creating a dynamic and vivid sonic experience that embodies the formless nature of both sound and water.

While reading "Half Sound, Half Philosophy," water was the first thing that came to mind. It embodies sound philosophy in three ways: first, the linguistic fluidity, like Bruce Lee's "be formless, shapeless" embodies water philosophy; second, the sonic materiality - sound waves flow like water, formless yet powerful; lastly, metamorphosis - language is like water, carrying and transforming meaning through different states.