Sneak Preview

Here's a sneak preview of The Medieval Village, the welcoming area for the SAC students and visitors   This is the first level of the Sonic Arts Lab/Project.    Unfortunately, you cannot hear the
landscape.   At first opportunity, we will capture via machinima the look and sound of the region, and all the regions.  For now, here's your quick visual tour.   Click on photos to enlarge.  

Our first orientation into listening commences this week, Tuesday June 18th and runs through
Thursday, June 20th.   Then we set the students free to explore the many levels prepared for them.

To appreciate all this imagery, you have to realize we started with absolutely nothing - on the bottom level, we had just a standard lifeless terrain, which had to be completely overhauled.  It look like we had landed on the moon, so it occurred to me to plant a flag as a joke.

On other levels, we had to build in the sky, making something out of air, so to speak. The creation of these  several regions took one month, which is record time.

Special thanks to filmmaker/photographer/virtual artist Belinda Barnes for all her amazing help with this project.  None of this would be possible without her assistance, creativity and hard work.   On behalf of SIUC and UWA, we acknowledge her contributions.

More photos to come of the other regions and our activities on them.

Thanks to all who helped make this project possible.  In addition to the Office of Distance Education (Director Gayla Stoner), we thank those in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts (SIUC) - Interim Dean Dafna Lemish, Assistant Dean Clare Mitchell, Academic Adviser Jean Kelly,  Business Manager Debi Harmon, and of course Acting Chairperson Novotny Lawrence.

Listen up, here's the Student Avatars

The Sound Explorers this summer....

It's done - the student avatars have made their debut in the virtual world of Second Life. This is only a representation of their appearance, some favor their avatars, some don't.  They were birthed from many free items on SL marketplace, and most of all Virtual Spain, a site that generously provides much of what you need to start.  It takes a couple of minutes to create an avatar when you log into SecondLife.com.  However it takes two to four hours to style one, if you don't want to look generic.

The student avatars may evolve their appearance over the summer, but that is not the point of the course.  As an avatar, they can listen and explore the virtual world.  The student avatars reside in the welcoming area of Virlantis, a sim level designed for their initial immersion.   Themed medieval, it is the ideal place to start to discover sounds, and some early sound and music traditions.

As an experimental course, we will be documenting this experience on this blog.   Can we experience sound virtually, in a way that becomes authentic to our listening experience?  Can this experience shape our listening in the "real" world?

Click on each photo to enlarge. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, Angelo returns to Second Life from the Spring semester course, Virtual Worlds, and joins us for Sound Art and Practice.   Here is a photo from his midterm project that he developed further at the end of the semester.

In fact, it might be fun to share last semester's class photo.  Students created their
own avatars for that course, as part of a segment on self-identity in virtual worlds.

Two students from that same class are helping with the set building for this new online course.  
More on that later.

For now that's it~  Welcome all~

pwj

About our Virtual Location

Special Thanks to the University of Western Australia, as well as our own campus - from providing virtual land for the development of this course within Second Life. 

We are located on a new sim called SIU-UWA Virlantis.  The area is closed to the public until student orientation is completed.

But we will be sharing some photos on this blog soon of each region.

pwj

Welcome to The Noise

Welcome to RTD 362i Sound Art and Practice!

From acoustic ecology to the sonic arts to their musical influences - ambient, electronic, industrial, punk, experimental and contemporary, this course gives a sampling of it all.   This course is not new to our curriculum - we are merely developing an online course based on our positive experiences with earlier courses - Virtual Words, Virtual Filmmaking and Virtual Communities. 

In Sound Art and Practice (a university core course that serves an elective in our RTD major as well) - we move from Thoreau's Walden ("Sound" and "Solitude" chapters) to the Ragtime King Scott Joplin to Luigi Russolo's "Art as Noise" manifesto to Frank Zappa's admiration for half mad scientist/electronic music composer Edgard Varese to John Cage's appreciation of sound as electronic and organic, to the others who have been influenced by them - Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Brian Eno, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the rise of Riot Grrls, Latino and Afro Punk.  We begin in an era of Futurism, rediscovering the early 20th century theorists/composers of noise and sound art, and conclude by looking at the work of Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) and others still at it. We also look specifically at women noise makers and some fantastic acoustic ecologists, soundscape composers and electronic music leaders, from Hildegard Westerkamp, to Pauline Oliveros.   So whether you like the Ronettes (only female band to open for Beatles), the Silver Apples, or Ratatat, there's something for everyone to appreciate, as we look back and forward to reclaim our sonic world.

Experience the world of sound within Second Life, on several regions designed to introduce and immerse you into the field of sound studies.  This blog will detail our experiences. 
Contact phylisj@yahoo.com for more info.

pjw