Category Archives: Assignments

Moon Graffiti

M. Marshall 2.7

Listening to Moon Graffiti was a very cool experience. It is interesting to think about a timeline where the mission to land on the Moon failed and to contemplate how worthwhile it is to go to the Moon. Last semester I took Writing About the Moon with Dr. Scanlon, and we talked a lot about the history of the Moon landing. Pretty much as soon as Apollo 11 landed back on Earth, pink slips of paper to fire employees were being handed out because the project was over and they could no longer expend the resources necessary to fund NASA. I wonder if Apollo 11 had failed if they would have continued to push for it, or if they would have just given up. The radio-sound of the podcast makes it feel like a real historical audio of something that happened.

Breaking News!

M. Marshall 2.7

I used the suggested website, Collosyan. I didn’t have any great ideas so I did a news story based on a common scam technique from the 2000’s and 2010’s (ish), where a person receives an email from someone claiming to be a prince from Nigeria asking for money to unfreeze their bank account. The news story covers the request for $40,000 and the rewards for helping the prince to unfreeze his bank account. The AI created a video which I made into an audio file. Here it is!

Radio Show Ideas

M. Marshall 2.7

When considering a potential radio show for my character’s world, I’ve thought about a news radio show, documenting what is happening in the world and basically observing my character. Another thing I’ve thought about is my character was someone’s pet, so there could be a podcast for the person who had them as a pet where they talk about what has been going on to document it… My character is a cat, so it would be difficult to have her talking, which adds complexity to how I should create a radio show around her. None of the ideas feel perfect but I feel like I’m at a good start!

Live Listening Session!

M. Marshall 2.7

I listened in on the live session on the DS106 Radio on Tuesday (February 4th). I really enjoyed the experience of getting to listen to a story alongside the class and professor. The story line was very interesting, following a woman doing research into a town called Limetown that seemed to be experimenting with mind chipping. You can listen to the story yourself here!

I felt like I learned from this is that in audio work, what seems like small details are very important for getting a listener to be fully immersed in an experience. Sounds like waves at a beach, a voice getting closer to signify that one character is walking towards the other, or an echo to help visualize the size of the space, makes a listener feel like they are there. It was cool to react to things at the same time as other people, so I was glad to get to try that out.

If a Man is Stabbed Alone in the Woods, Does He Make a Sound?

I utilized Audacity and FreeSound in order to construct my project, and opted to tackle it bit by bit. I started with my ambiance/background music, and then just added on the story. It goes as follows: a man approaches an area in the woods, builds and lights a fire, and begins to look through his backpack. As he does this, branches crack behind him as someone else reaches him. The stranger stabs the man, he falls, and he is stabbed again. The stranger retreats back into the woods.

The most challenging part of this project was just trying to find the right sounds effects for what I wanted to convey, as I often had an idea of what I wanted it to sound like but had to dig for the “perfect” sound. Overall, I enjoyed this, and the learning curve wasn’t too severe!

ds106 as Music

For one of the audio assignments this week, I created a song in Chrome Music Labs. I played around with a couple of diffrent ideas, but ended up creating a song that was mapped as the text “ds106.” I’m not sure it sounds the best- all the straight lines make it kind of garbled and agressive, but I had a lot of fun with the program! It is quite user friendly and intuitive to use.