Category: radio project

Me and Jack Centro investigated various Instagram personalities, and from there, build a character that would help us write a script for our interview. Jack was in charge of this bit, while I dedicated my time writing the script and organizing the structure of the story. For me, it wasn’t difficult, because I have a going-on relation with Cinema and I enjoy writing scripts for my short-films. Once, my colleague had his job done, Just_Cindy was created – the pinnacle of an influencer’s stereotype. I decided that Just_Cindy would be a character that would expose her self in the same terms as Guy Debord exposed society. Collaterally, we used Debord’s death as an interlude for our story, with the leitmotif of pointing out society’s fate. In one week, we had our job complete and we were proud and confident to present it to the rest. Working with Jack was engaging because it took me back to the days where I was immersed in pre-production meetings with the film crew, developing the script and other technical aspects. Jack gave me the same spirit and we worked greedily towards our objectives.

After the script reading meeting, I suggested that my sister, Ângela Ramos (Gigi), could play CINDY, as she is a professional actress. Daniel Pakdel would play DANIEL and finally, I would act as GUY. This was the most difficult part for me and probably for anyone because I had to direct my Ângela (a professional actress) and Daniel (a non-actor). I spent the whole week rehearsing with both, adding new annotations and changes to the script to make it look more solid and plausible. I tried my best to don’t annoy them and be very demanding, as this task has to be very precise and well done. I also had to manage the meetings to the rehearsals and the studio sessions in Barcelona so Ângela could record her voice. For this, I’ve to thank my friend Lola J. Espejo for being the recordist behind my sister’s sessions. On other hand, Daniel was a bit more complicated as being a non-actor and having zero experience in this area. I’ve gone through with him with various references of real-life podcast interviews, and finally, we managed to get his part perfectly. Gigi managed to complete her part in three takes and Daniel in two.

The following text corresponds to notes taken while analyzing Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”, the book that our radio project bases on.

1967 the society of the spectacle

critique to society – post-WWII consumerism in Europe. “A society organized around such consumption induced boredom while shaping peoples desires in a way that could be fulfilled only through the purchase of consumer goods” (the situationist international)

They wanted to encourage people to live true experiments without the need of recurring to capitalism and consumerism, which fulfills a lie in ourselves. “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles”. Debord says that capitalist societies make us need (not want) more., but the present stage of capitalism is bringing about a general shift from “having” to appearing” – all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances”. Rather from the desire, we are guided by thinking that it will improve how we appear to others (and it could be subconscious). Being obsessed with appearance and image above all else. Modern advertising largely operates around selling us products based on the effect they might have upon our appearance. 

We are all responsible for sustaining the society of the spectacle. Real-life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it”. The problem is not only the politicians and advertisements but all of us – social media

The version of ourselves that we place online is highly curated and selective: most of us are quite keen to portray ourselves as happy people who are successful in some way and fulfilled in our relationships. We act like advertisers. We are more into appear to be successful rather than actively going out and seeking those experiences.

Recently, I had the opportunity to experience the feeling of being live. In this lecture with Dawn Scarfe, we tested and experimented with the Locus Sonus Platform – also known as LOCUSTREAM, it is a project meant to be used worldwide by all types of users, dedicated to the sharing of local (or current time) soundscapes. It is as accessible as providing your cell phone’s microphone as a sound receiver, and lately, stream by the same source to the world. It comes also with a map which shows all the online microphones around the world.

It was interesting to hear all these different streams from different users around the world, and also to merge them. There was also an interesting, yet unintentional feature that came up the stream, which was the 6-second-delay, that would make your recent past self. The main point of this project was to question ‘traditional’ listening and compositional practices where audio content is pre-determined. My doubts came in this phase. How can this radio experience be so authentical? If it was said that all listenings weren’t live, all the listener’s expectations would disappear, because it was no longer “live”. What makes live be live? Is this the way to explore the full meaning of this type of format? In my opinion, it is interesting to see such a big movement behind streaming homemade soundscapes, but the pre-determined factor is a bit wick, considering that the placement of the microphone is not particularly random and that could be determined what is being listened to. The fact, it was asked to place our cell phones pointing to a window or outdoor is an “artistic” decision. Determinism shouldn’t be used as a way to dissimulate live performance. I didn’t want to fall into a cliché, but everything is determined. 

After reading Thomas De Quincey essay “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” two topics appeared to me:

1 – The perspective of an academic friend of mine about sound effects

2- How his idea presented a flaw in sound nature.

De Quincey reflects on his essay a tremendous obsession with a particular sound event in the play. He talks about that sound in a very descriptive and analytic way, trying to relate every aspect of the story with that particular sound and how that influenced the spectator’s mood. This reflection threw me back to a year ago where I was amongst the most relevant “sound intellectuals” in Spain. One of them was my tutor Ricardo Steinberg, the one responsible for the sound of many of Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar’s films and collector of one Goya for “Best Sound.”. Every week, I rested 3 hours inside of a sound studio with him and my colleagues discussing the qualities and approaches of our sound projects, non-stop. His perspective was solid for him, having constantly good responses to defend his ideas. He was pro-verisimilitude and anti-sensationalism (which he would refer to this last one as effectivism): being pro-verisimilitude means that he would only accept the paths the most follow the true-like events, refusing sound propositions that didn’t represent truthiness. If the spectator doesn’t believe, then the sound would be unacceptable. Being anti-effectivism signifies strong disbelief with exaggeration of sound effects to approach a particular mood. He believed these could be approached with plain sound, without having to recur to an excess of music or sound effects. One film that most characterizes this idea is “The Others” by Alejandro Amenabar, where he was a sound supervisor. The challenge for him in this film was “How can we reproduce the sound of the world of the dead?”, “How can we pursuit a dead atmosphere”. The solution was simple: “The world of the dead doesn’t have sound. You can only hear voices. There’s is no effects whatsoever.”, and amazingly, it worked. The sound is dead. No life. No nature.

However, Steinberg’s view of sound, in my eyes, has a flaw. He strongly believes in the capability of sound through an enclosed time and space. Sound has to be confined in order to produce verisimilitude. But sound has an immense range of time and also space: Imagine the following example: put on a film, select a scene, pause it. What do you see? You’re looking at a frame of a sequence, or more succinctly, a photograph: it is something planned, there’s a mise-en-scene, a choice of colors and character placement, and framing. Collaterally, the sound of that sequence was meant to be calm, soothing, with atmosphere, you can determine the acoustic qualities of what’s being seen, you can decipher somehow emotive intentionally, but what about the sound of that frame? What does it sound like? It could be similar to a click, a kick, it could now sound metallic, but it’s not metallic? Which materials does this click resemble? Now, compare both experiments: 1 minute of a shot in the image represents the same thing before and after the frame selection, but sound changes completely, showing us to different worlds. Sound can be timeless, Sound can be spaceless.

The following posts on Radio Project are related to the ongoing project about the art of radio. The idea is to get a sound piece to be broadcasted on RESONANCE FM, composed alongside my colleagues. These posts are meant to be reflections made after the sessions taken once a week with Dr. Dawn Scarfe and Dr. Ed Baxter.

The topic being analyzed in the first session is an assertion by Bonny M. Miller – “The Pictures are better on the radio” – concerning a 1997 radio program/documentary broadcasted on BBC R4 called Touching the Elephant.  It is a social experience influenced by an Indian parable (Blind men and an elephant), where blind people try to describe an elephant by touching it so they can “picture it”. 

Reflection:

The Touching the Elephant experience is rather a very genius idea, as it transfers the listener to the world of the imagination and non-tangible and full of propositional realities. Its broadcast gives the non-blind a sense of momentaneous blindness when deciphering which parts the voices are trying to describe. But the whole experience of listening to the radio gives you that lack of space that your brain tries to fill. In this matter, the program only emphasizes more the sensorial capabilities of radio listening. Pictures are better on the radio – I might agree to some extent. This phrase has a positive connotation to it that sounds imperative, but I disagree. I think there’s a constant battle between sound and image. Sometimes they become one and artists call it audiovisual, and sometimes they act separately and recurring the other to sustain themselves (e.g when photography transmits a lot of sounds and vice versa). In The Emancipated Spectator, a book by Jacques Rancière, it is discussed how the image has a leading role in societies beliefs and opinions, related to the artist’s intuitions, which I agree, but I think the existence of both should be more introduced in our lives than it normally is through more differed artistry content. Pictures aren’t better on the radio. Pictures are good on the radio.