The Not-So-Precious Precious
Style: An epic revisited Description: The history of a hobbit, a ring, and the future of an entire realm retold with the rhythmic cadences of a fan conjuring thoughts of tribal drums in the background. Yes, a fan.Running time: 2:30.00
Three Sounds: The prerecorded voice is taken from an action figure of Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” in which he says “my precious”. The rhythmic noise was made using a ceiling fan and the exclamation is a mimicry of Gollum with the pitch of my voice changed slightly.
Citation:
Crunchy leaves – Cognito Perceptu
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=17125
Thunder – Erdie
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24003
Wind – Medialint
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=11863
All sounds found on the Free Sound Project
Language is imperfect.
Language is concrete.
Language is incapable of adequately conveying human emotion, let alone the natural world.
Whether it is justified or not, these are the complaints lodged against the written and spoken word.
But even in the face of these charges, we haven’t stopped trying to express ourselves in new, more complex ways whenever the opportunity – or technology – allows it.
The podcast, as a technologically driven art form, takes into consideration the Oulipian desire to create a new entity while also taking the time to explore the potentiality of the written word when employed by this new medium. The key to the podcast as an expressive form is its ability to explore and experiment with words, thoughts, and emotions. This process, however, is extremely different from the experimentation one would undertake when attempting to express oneself through the written word.
Unlike writing that relies solely on capturing an emotion or image through black on blank (the written word can be read aloud of course as well), the podcast enables the user to compliment the language with an array of different sounds and even alter the pitch, speed, and overall quality of the spoken word to convey a desired effect. With this in mind, I attempted to use the available technology to the fullest extent by utilizing a number of sounds to create a certain ambiance unavailable to either the written or spoke word. However, after much debate, I decided to leave the main body, the spoken word that retells the story of Frodo, the ring, and Gollum alone so that the focal point of the podcast would not become how the word was altered – or the intriguing sound effects – but rather how the word was able to remain the same in the face of technology. While this attempt may not appear to be of the utmost significance, I found it important to place a certain amount of emphasis upon the spoken word in an effort to prevent it from becoming lost among the bells and whistles, the frills and bows of the podcast. For example, while I could have modified my voice in the “body” of the podcast just like I did for the exclamation at the beginning of the podcast, I chose to allow the words – rather than the tone or pitch of the voice – to convey the desired meaning; whether or not I achieved this effect is debatable and entirely up to the listener. In the same vein, I feel that it is much more challenging to let the words stand for themselves than it is to allow technology to shape and transform the ultimate impact and meaning of the language used. Similarly, while an eerie background may have helped influence the overall effect of the podcast, I decided to stay with a natural, almost tribal, sounding cadence made by running my fingertips across the moving blades of a ceiling fan. Although the creation of this podcast did not consciously begin as an attempt to let the word speak for itself in the technological realm, the final results – which were partially driven by what technology is incapable of doing – would seem to disagree.
While technology allows language to be conveyed in such a way that the meaning and effect of the mechanically-enhanced word can be explicated further and with greater ease than the spoken word alone, I still found it very difficult to convey the exact emotions I had envisioned while creating my podcast. For example, it was very frustrating to know exactly what type of sound I wanted to include in a certain part of the podcast, but not be able to find a sound similar to it; technology, like the word, has its limits to how closely you can express your thoughts and the world around you. The sound of leaves crunching is difficult to record and at times even more difficult to distinguish when you are not told that it is in fact the sound of leaves being crunched underfoot. Audio recordings, like the word, have a difficult time fully replicating human emotions and are often unable to adequately depict a scene as well as it would be conveyed visually. In addition to being limited by the sounds or lack thereof available online, I found that the form of my podcast was shaped by the parameters listed on the Third Coast Festival website. After finding out that the podcast had to include a prerecorded voice – in my case Gollum’s – the avenues of creativity closed very quickly. Being well aware of the fact that I had a prerecorded voice ready for the using, I may have neglected other possibilities that would have worked just as well. Oddly enough, the guidelines, which usually aid the formation of a written work of art (at least in scholastic circles), hampered the creativity of my podcast.
If given further time to work on this podcast, it would be well worth the effort to attempt to record a variety of sounds on my own so that they could coordinate with the overall theme of the podcast. The creative process, I feel, is stunted a bit when the creator has to rely on the creations of others; one would feel more invested in the overall product if wasn’t an amalgamation of work from other sources. On a lesser note, I would continue to work on the podcast in an effort to strengthen the storyline a bit and possibly add additional layers to it although it would be difficult to do given the two minute thirty second time limit; this time limit does add to the level of creativeness necessary for this podcast assignment, however.
But, when all is said and done, my podcast learning experience hinges greatly on one thing: it is much easier to envision what emotions and ideas you would like your podcast to communicate than it is to successfully express these given emotions and ideas in a podcast.
December 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Chris,
Don’t hear this as a critique, but your podcast makes me think of a trailer for either the trilogy itself or the movie (makes me wonder if Tolkien needed so many words–but now I’m treading on the territory of a fan…). To ensure that I mean this as anything but a critique, one of the things I like about your podcast is the use of language. You really have condensed the plot, which might strip the story of its conflict and interest, but your attention to sound and repetition stylistically make the summary itself interesting.
The only thing that really stood out to me was the first constraint, using “To begin with…” It feels tacked on at the beginning there. You might have considered a way to interpret it metaphorically or with sound so that you could make it cohere better with the rest of the piece.
Really strong evaluation–I appreciate the reference back to the Oulipo reading at the beginning (”the origin of language might be traced back to a man who had a stomachache and wanted to express that fact… //Of course he didn’t succeed in expressing this; never could succeed; nobody will ever succeed”) as well as your final insight that technology (at least in this case) may add layers of texture and meaning to language but it can’t necessarily overcome the limitations of language altogether.