This is the opening, and the ‘default’ screen.
I created this mediascape, to learn how to use the Mscape Maker, and to trial the GPS devices with my students at school. My students experimented with the recording of ambient sounds around the school, and experimented with some of the narration, having great fun playing with the voice effects in Garageband. The memories themselves I recorded from old scholars, when they were in school for the Easter reunion. I was lucky to catch a year with a special reunion of pupils who had left the school in 1944.
The first task is to produce a map. We do have an arial map of the school, but using a google map was more simple. A small jpeg of the map is loaded onto a PDA, and a grid of coordinates created by walking the perimeter of the chosen area, stopping every few paces to mark a point on map.
Above is a screen shot, and below an enlargement, of the mediascape as programmed, with it’s many layers of audio and image files. The first layer were all ‘speakers’; ambient recordings attached to zones, with the volume of the recording increasing towards it’s centre. We made sure that the full area of the mediascape was covered with speakers, so there would be no breaks in the audio experience. Over the top of these ambient recordings were some of the more specific recordings such as laughs, planes overhead, snatches of conversation, the fountain, ping pong etc., and somewhere in between, the recordings of memories.
The art room at Sidcot circa 1908 - click on the image for the gallery of archive photographs.
>incendiary
>britsol on fire
>early morning swim
Above are just three of the many recordings that I made of old scholar’s memories. I have chosen the a couple of the wartime memories and a swimming memory, as mentioned above.
>the snows of 63
>washing up
>sliding on a frozen pond
Above are three recordings done by students, reading memories that were written by old scholars in a book that I left in the school library over the old scholar’s weekend. We have added a bit of an echo effect, with the idea that this might be the voice of the adult as a child, echoing from the past.
>ambientchildren
>ambientswimmingpool
>ambientplayground
These are ambient sound recordings to provide background texture to the mediascape
>introductiontosydney
>as if you were blind
This is me talking to my year 9 students. The second idea, although not pursued, is still interesting - a little like the trust game when one person leads a blindfolded partner on a walk, only with the mscape as the partner.
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