SI25 Broadcast 3: Underwater Exploration

Concept

We depicted our radio show as an exploration underwater. This journey had three phases, each one introduced by a fictional narrator, in order: getting towards the water, swimming and diving. We collected audio material from archive.org, Aporee and Youtube videos, and we mixed everything in real-time to form an ambient soundscape. The memes, songs, texts, audios, and music were like bubbles emerging from our minds.

Roles

• Chrissy(producer) /Wyn(interface)
• Imre (host)
• Claudio (host)
• Martina (host)

Prompts

Hello everyone, The 3rd radio group is preparing for next Monday's show (October 7th), and we need your help. We have two questions we'd like everyone to answer:

1.What is experimental? 2.What is a protocol?

Please post your responses on your personal wiki page. You're free to answer in any form or format you prefer (meme, a video, words, a song,etc), but it would be better if they were audio clips, or memes/images with accompanying text descriptions.

Your answers will be featured during our radio show, so please submit them before Friday evening. (We have 2 Oct. birthday club members, HBD to @Martina and @chrissy ˑ𓂃⊹˚° - and hope they enjoy a good weekend without work!) If you post your answer on your page, please react :checkbox:️ to this message :) Thank you for your participation!

Setup

At Radio WORM we used two computers both connected to a mixer as input audio source. We used a small program mad in Touchdesigner that allows track selection, playback, and some basic manipulation (ex. speed, panning, trimming). We took turns to operate from the two laptops.

Structure

Intro

Part 1: water ambient noises

Part 2: Text to speech playback of the answers to the questions "what is a protocol?" and 'what is experimental?" we received, mixed together with the water soundscape.

Part 3: Songs/texts/memes that relate to water.

Outro

Media

Recordings of the radio show

Conceptual Framework

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.

Radio Narrator

complete intro (protocals + introduction)

radio transition

radio outro

Samples

• "Be water my friend"

"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.

• 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

• Under water bubble sound

• Ice cracking sound

• Drops leak

• Ocean Waves

• Rain on some container

• Ocean Waves crushing

• Animal Drinking water

• Man chocking on water

• Waves and splashes

• Water Bottle

• Heavy running stream

• Water running underwater

• Whales in water

• Waves crushing at the beach

• Small Stream

• River running

• Big big scary scary waves

• Another water another bottle

• Water in Bathtub?

• Door-raindrop contact

• Dreamy sea

• Fort Rinella beach

• Muffled sea

• Sea groaning

• Seashore

• Tom boiling a kettle

• synchronized swimming

• static loop

• air psa

• blood flow

• mask breath 1

• mask breath 2

• woman breathing

• breathing underwater

• deep breathing

• tip swimming 1

• tip swimming 2

• tip swimming 3

• voice underwater

• you need to drink

• how much do you need to drink

• why you need water

• thirst and hunger

• sparkling water

---

• Hermeto Pascoal - Música da Lagoa (Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira, 1985)

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.

---

• Some song snipppets about water/rivers/sea & such

(Blue_Bayou.mp3, bobby-darin-splish-splash_1.mp3, ella-fitzgerald-cry-me-a-river_1.mp3, enya-orinoco-flow_1.mp3, enya-orinoco-flow_2.mp3, HaveYouEverSeenTheRain_2.mp3, here-comes-the-rain-again-Eurythmics_3.mp3, justin-timberlake-cry-me-a-river_1.mp3, PurpleRain.mp3, singin-in-the-rain_gene-kelly_1.mp3, SmokeOnTheWater_Simpsons.mp3, the-beatles-yellow-submarine_1.mp3, the-doobie-brothers_black-water_1.mp3, the-kooks_seaside_1.mp3, the-swimming-song_Loudon Wainwright I||_1.mp3, TLC_Waterfalls_segment.mp3, Water-Songs_allSegments.mp3)

• Cold Water - Damien Rice

• 水底乐园（wonderland of underwater）

---

Questions

1. What is experimental?

• Anything that I am still testing/ never tested before-if related to artwork.
• Outside the box
• Conducting various steps (protocols) to test a hypothesis.
• Something relatively innovative compared to other bodies of work.
• First thing that comes to mind is music. Otherwise Art, innovation, science. Trying out something that you have never tried before.
• Anything that doesn’t fit a conventional pattern or tradition
• Anything testing a theory
• If something is experimental, it means that it was never done before and the output is unknown
• It is said of something that aims to prove useful once it's been used and refined enough. When something enters its experimental phase it will often enter it with a certain goal in mind, so the utility of something that is said to be in an "experimental phase" will vary. Those results, no matter if they are deemed to be positive or negative, will be the result of experimentation, and will inevitably branch out to new discoveries and to the gathering of new experiences related to the experimented subject. It can be argued that acquiring the most "usefulness" of the experimented item will not always be the final goal of the already mentioned process. Flaws may become features instead of hindrances and the goal could even become an ever shifting finish line that will never be reached.
• It is a set of requirements to be strictly followed in order to create a new procedure or system.
• Experimental is the wild side of the brain and protocol ist the sorting out
• To test something with trials and experiments
• I think practically anything new and iteractive can be considered experimental.
• Experimental means that something that is not proven as a fact but trying to be proven as fact which makes is experimental or it is something that is against the social norms or rules that are broken but trying to get a reaction doing an a abnormal act
• what pushes boundaries, against standard practices
• feelin shit out
• In a new way, without adhering to established conventions
• Alexandria's definition:

• Kiara's definition: Never quite finished (until you decide it is or get tired of working on it), can not quite be related to a specific field \is it art or design or performance or. That's Experimental
• Kim's def:

experiment (noun): an observation, test, or trial, piece of evidence or empirical proof; feat of magic or sorcery

from Old French esperment "practical knowledge, cunning; enchantment, magic spell; trial, proof, example; lesson, sign, indication

from Latin: ex "out of" + peritus "experienced, tested," from PIE *per-yo-, suffixed form of root per- "to try, risk."

experimental (adjective): "having experience", "for the sake of experiment"

• Zuhui's def:

attempts at trying out new systems of thought, government, or social organization. These might be attempts to explore alternative ways of living or interacting as a society to see what works and what doesn't.

• experimental is working within your own rules with no known outcome
• Something novel and unique, such as the combination of two things that would not “go together” in “normal” circumstances
• something unconventional
• Melisa's def:

A (extraordinary/niche) new approach to... Thinking beyond the binary... Twisting traditional ways/methods of doing something into something more free...

2. What is a protocol?

• Arbitrary set of rules widely accepted to be adhered to in a given setting.
• Inside the box.
• Rules, also regulations and standards, a set of steps that must be complied with
• Set of rules, created to “copy” a procedure, or keep safe.

• A protocol can be considered as a series of different rules to follow, in order to fulfil a certain task or goal.
• A protocol is a set of rules commonly agreed upon by any number of active members that ensures a certain functionality. It is a go-to method that aims to narrow down the different ways one could act to prevent a situation, or to respond to it, so quick action can be taken and the collaterals reduced to a minimum.
• It is a procedure to accomplish or demonstrate a result done in a standard way.
• Recording results after meetings
• Protocol is something that feels like rules in a certain order that needs to be applied no matter what. It is list of rules that needs to be obeyed. In a concept of professionalism, or politics or something that is very strict political social gatherings.
• what remains static, normative, hegemonic
• the front seats reserved for important ppl on a theatre show
• An established set of rules or procedures to follow in a given situation
• Alexandria's definition:

• Kiara's definition: The Protocol is often made up to produce experimentation, but doesn't always results in experimental work...
• Kim's definition:

Medieval Latin protocollum "draft," literally "the first sheet of a volume" Greek prōtokollon [1] "first sheet glued onto a manuscript proto-: "first, source, parent, preceding, earliest form, original, basic" + kolla: "glue" development of meaning: "rough draft; original copy of a treaty, etc." -> "official record of a transaction" -> "diplomatic document" -> (?)

• working according to a protocol is applying a set of step by step instructions to your work
• Step by step guide that is expected to be followed
• fixed procedure designed for a situation
• Melisa's def:

A guideline that gives an instruction. Basically, a way to communicate a task to the appointed person/object etc.

Feedback

Since the water soundscape was too simple, the audiences thought it was like a toilet radio. I felt like doing an English test in the toilet.

Reflection

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.

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.

Readings

Half Sound, Half Philosophy: Aesthetics, Politics, and History of China's Sound Art ; Print length. 232 pages ; Language. English