Reel 2 Real - Audio - Delivering Sound

Delivering Sound

'Designs for the Delivery of Ethnographic Sound' was a one-day workshop organised and hosted by Marina Jirotka at the Oxford eResearch Centre together with Noel Lobley and Chris Morton at the Pitt Rivers Museum

The purpose of the workshop was to explore and develop new ways of engaging diverse audiences with ethnographic sound collections, making them available online, in gallery spaces and beyond.

This one-day workshop included an introduction to the Pitt Rivers sound collections and an overview of contemporary sound archiving practice, followed by themed sessions designed to explore the major issues of digital access, analysis and delivery. The workshop brought together a small group of invited experts in Digital Humanities, sound art, sound archiving, anthropology. and database and website design. We discussed the possibilities for sound collections to be delivered to audiences in public spaces and online in innovative ways, engineered as soundscapes, and repatriated to source communities.

Invited participants on the day were:

Daniel Burt
Website and Database designer for Reel to Real Project, Pitt Rivers Museum
www.sunnymedia.co.uk

Grace Eden
Senior Research Associate at the Oxford e-Research Centre and postdoctoral researcher on the EPSRC funded project 'Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT'.
www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/grace.eden/

Christian Heath
Professor of Work and Organisation and leads the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Centre at King's College, London. He specializes in video-based studies of social interaction.
www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/management/people/academic/heath.aspx

Martin de Heaver
Independent consultant.
www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-de-heaver/0/5a0/27a

Sebastian Hegarty
Interdisciplinary artist
www.sebastianehegarty.com/

Peter Higgins
Creative Director, Land Design Studio Ltd.
www.landdesignstudio.co.uk

Peter Hudston
Composer, archivist, research assistant for Reel to Real.
www.peterhudston.com

Marina Jirotka
Reader in Requirements Engineering, Director of the Centre for Requirements Engineering and Associate Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre
www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/marina.jirotka/

Jerome Lewis
Anthropologist, Director of Cultures of Sustainability, UCL Environment Institute
Co-director of Anthroscape  Co-director of the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group at King's College London
www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/peopl...emic_staff/j_lewis

Noel Lobley
Ethnomusicologist at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Project Researcher for Reel to Real.
http://pittrivers-sound.blogspot.co.uk/

Paul Luff
Professor in Organisations and Technology, King's College London.
www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/m...academic/luff.aspx

Chris Morton
Curator of photograph, manuscript and sound collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Project manager for Reel to Real.
http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/about-us/staff/academic/dr-christopher-morton/

Dave de Roure
Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre and Professor of e-Research. National Strategic Director for Digital Social Research and has a coordinating role in Digital Humanities @ Oxford.
www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder

Mark Sandler
Professor of Signal Processing and Head of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London.
www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/people/view/3114/prof-mark-sandler

Janet Topp Fargion
Ethnomusicologist and lead curator of the World and Traditional Music Section at the British Library Sound Archive
www.bl.uk/researchregister/1.10/?app_cd=RR&page_cd=RESEARCHER&l_researcher_id=68

Resources

Sound Galleries

Musical torchlit trails at the Pitt Rivers Museum

On Friday November 23rd 2012, the galleries of the Pitt Rivers Museum were plunged into evening darkness and bathed in Bayaka music and sound from the Central African Republic. Visitors were given torches to explore the galleries that were transformed into a rich forest soundscape with sung fables, snatches of laughter, beautiful variations on harps and flutes, and the stunning polyphonic singing of Bayaka women. Hidden surprises included mini projections from the rainforests and a visualiser designed by Nathaniel Mann, the PRM's Embedded Composer in Residence. The evening was filmed By Mike Day of Intrepid Cinema as part of the Reel to Real project, and complemented the Oxford City-wide Christmas Light Night organised by Oxford Inspires. A four hour playlist of Bayaka music from the PRM's sound collections, originally recorded by Louis Sarno, was curated on the evening by Nathaniel Mann and Dr Noel Lobley. The event was streamed online, and was watched live in the Central African Republic by Louis Sarno and some of the Bayaka community.