wish you were hear

Strangers

2006-12-03T03:09:00.000-08:00

Shizuka Yokomizo takes pictures of strangers. But they know she's doing it. Her series "Stranger" shows people captured through their windows, voyeur-style. Some face the camera defiantly, arms crossed. Others stare out looking amused, or concerned. Yokomizo sends her subjects a special letter addressed "Dear Stranger," which says:

"I would like to take a photograph of you standing in your front room. A camera will be set up outside the window in the street. If you do not mind being photographed please stand in your room and look at the camera through the window for 10 minutes. I will take your picture then leave."

If the subject doesn't wish to participate on the arranged date, they are to draw the curtains instead.

Here's an article from the BBC that tells a little more about the artist.

It's funny to imagine this as a project for sound. "Dear Stranger, we would like to record you in your apartment for one hour. A microphone will be placed in each of your rooms. If you do not wish to participate, don't say anything."

Hmm...too many CIA/Stasi implications, no? Perhaps it would be an interesting project to simply send the letter, and not do anything else...

more than one way

2006-11-14T06:53:00.000-08:00

99 ways to do a radio story from the Third Coast Festival has 75 entries, so you better hurry up if you want to enter. I've only listened to a couple, but I really liked Jonathan Menjivar's piece "Want Some Sushi?" (Number 54).

Also fun for a pre-Thanksgiving snack -- Bill Buford of the New Yorker talks about wild turkeys and people who are cuckoo for them.

Second Person

2006-11-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

Errol Morris is one of my favorite creators. He has an unusual take on things - determined, thorough, obsessive. He even invents special machines to get the kinds of intense, intimate video interviews he wants. I loved his series "First Person" that ran on Bravo. Each episode was a twisted revelation - from the (seemingly normal) woman who falls in love with prison inmates, to the scientist consumed by the hunt for the giant squid, to the victim-turned-entrepreneur who designed a crime clean-up business out of neccessity. Incredible interviews combined with clever and quirky old film footage as visual metaphor. I couldn't wait for the second round of the series, which was comissioned by IFC. Well, after waiting years, I finally got my hands on them. And...and...meh. I've watched four of the six (last time there were 11, I think), and what I have noticed is that all the subjects are men, and they are quite fixated. And not as interesting as I would like. There's a guy who had hundreds of cameras all over his house to broadcast his life on the web - pre-reality show. There's a guy who thinks he's a genius but works as a bouncer. There's a guy who thinks he's a genius and works as a bouncer (yup, two of 'em) who repeated high school several times in order to try to get it right and who is obsessed with missing a question on Who Wants to be Millionaire? (okay, his episode was twice as long as the others - I guess he's more complicated). I would have never believed that an Errol Morris product could "jump the shark," but I just got the feeling this was done more out of contractual obligation than passion. And when you get that feeling, why watch? Well, because it's Errol Morris, and it's still worth it.

place your bets

2006-10-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

I just got an email from United Airways soliciting me use miles to bid for various things, including the chance to be a "Radio Personality." The winner will receive the chance to learn from "longtime host of Dining with Arline, Arline Wolff." The show is carried on CRN, "known as “The Voice of Television," which is heard in over 24 million homes."

While on your VocationVacations® Dream Job Holiday as a Radio Personality, Arline will mentor you in some or all of the following activities:

* Marketing yourself to radio stations to get an “in”
* Acquiring interesting, intriguing and engaging guests for a show
* How to write and research for a show
* Write actual commercials that will air
* Plan an interesting and varied program to keep the audience interested
* Learn the process for conducting in-depth interviews
* Learn how to be a good on-air listener
* Understand the art of “timing”
* Attend the production of a Dining with Arline show

Hmm. I wonder how much someone will bid to "be a Radio Personality." I'm sensing a funding source here...

Macho Men

2006-10-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

One of the best things I heard on the radio in the last year was the BBC's MACHO MEN two-part series. It's an unusual approach - two presenters, one female, from Mexico, and one male, from Nigeria, work together to explore the stereotypes and realities of Macho Men in their respective cultures. The male presenter is himself a bit of a macho man, and has to come to terms with the way he and his friends treat women. The resulting stories are very personal, but they also explore quite bit about each culture. I don't know that I've heard these "presenters" anywhere else on the BBC, but I would be interested to know how these very personal projects changed the way they were seen (or heard) by the audience. It's great readio - check it out - you can stream it or get a podcast.

The First Line

2006-10-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

How should a radio piece begin? Do you give the news? Introduce the main character? Or grab the listener by the ear and tug? I was grabbed recently by the first line of a piece on WNYC’s Studio 360. The show from September 29th was partly of a ‘best of’ -- as many previous guests received MacArthur Genius Grants this year. The piece here on Shahzia Sikander has a wild first line. I’m not going to write it here yet. Go listen to it. You’ll have to wait out the mundane, even off-putting introduction.

Okay, are you done? Here it is.

“I recently almost left a cheek smear on a 450 -year-old piece of art. But really, I had to. It was the only way I could get close enough.”

The reason why I love this is that I instantly get two vivid images – one of some woman with her face pressed against the glass of a tiny painting, and in the other, I see a painting clearly in my mind’s eye, as if I’m the one smearing MY cheek against the glass. And, actually, I also see the smear after the fact.

Sonic Bed Project

2006-10-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

London artist Kaffee Matthews designs furniture with feeling. Her Sonic Bed, which has been presented in London and Shanghai, allows one or more museum goers to recline in an enclosed space and experience music and sounds. Sometimes the artist is even on hand to change the settings herself. Matthews has also created Sonic Armchairs along the same lines - one was commissioned for an exhibition called Don't Worry at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Matthews works with a group called Music for Bodies. Their mission, according to their website, is to "make new 3D music and physical interfaces for enjoying it directly through your body rather than just your ears." Sounds good, feels good.

Hearing Voices on the BBC

2006-10-13T01:14:00.000-07:00

I listen to the BBC a lot here in Berlin. It's actually one of the highlights of living here for me. The channel is so varied, from new pop music to documentaries about the concept of Infinity. And, they are one of the few regular creators of radio documentaries. Last week, I heard one (or sort of heard one) that confused me, and made me think

Sometimes when I mishear things, it inspires me to think about what the lyrics or sound or style could have been - and then sometimes I realize that I come up with the same thing I would have heard if I'd actually been listening. And that's sort of what happened with this BBC piece last week. I was vaguely listening in the kitchen while I was doing the dishes, and I heard lots of dropouts and clicks, and I thought there was something wrong with the radio. And then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if this was part of the piece? Of course, it was.

It's called Hearing Voices, and it's about language death - the extinction of languages. It's part documentary, part sound art, done by a man called John Wynne. Coincidentally, as I sit here and type, I'm wearing a Third Coast Festival (an organization I have mixed feelings about) t-shirt, and the web tells me this piece won an award at the 2005 festival. You can hear a six minute excerpt here, or you can find the whole 28 minute piece here. The piece was also featured in this exhibition. Here's an interesting (if a bit pretentious)article about clicks and glitches - the way the traditional African language comes across on the radio). You might want to skip or skim the first two paragraphs.

As I was trying to find the audio link for Hearing Voices, I ended up streaming the BBC live on my laptop, and hearing a bit of another documentary about the Scottish island of St. Kilda, a barren place that is now uninhabited. One anecdote jumped out at me - a woman telling the story of how hard her mother worked, and that she received an orange for payment. She'd never seen an orange before, and didn't know what to do with it. So sat it on the dresser and eventually it rotted. And that was her payment. Very odd, very touching. Very very BBC.

Listening with Scissors

2006-10-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

I've decided to use this blog as a place to listen to radio and talk about it -- the good, the loud, and the ugly. A virtual listening session, if you will. Thanks to Julie Siple and Tina Tennessen for the inspiration -- check out the project Tina's a part of, D.C. Listening Lounge.

To start with, I'm going to add a link to a piece that aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered this past Sunday -- from a great team, reporter Joe Shapiro, and producer Tracy Wahl. It's a profile of the real mother portrayed in the book "Running With Scissors" - a classic monster mom, a wild woman. Except, maybe she's really human like the rest of us, and just as fascinating as the cruelly drawn caricature her son presented to the world.

It's interesting to read a few of the comments posted by listeners on NPR's blog. Some harsh words. What do you think? How do you feel about the role of the reporter question in this piece? Is it a fair story? Did the reporter sound like he was approaching the story objectively? These are questions, not criticisms...discuss...