Transient decisions

In the making of the online documentary I experienced quite a few technical limitations of my own knowledge. If I could have my wish list granted I would have changed the following:

• Roll over: sound plays, Roll off: Sound stops. As it is users have to be really careful in turning off the sounds by clicking before moving on to the next one, to make sure they don’t have overlapping sounds playing at the same time. Although I have included instructions and tips on the index page (and in blue to make sure they stand out) it doesn’t feel nice to have more than one voice in your head, especially when you have headphones on. Sort of like the programs that try to explain how schizophrenia feels. The other advantage that this set-up would have had would been that users could preview the sound without feeling trapped in it. I discussed in a previous post trying to add smaller bite-sized sounds that started playing on roll-over where the entire sound sequence would play on a click, but when I constructed this I was confronted by many more problems. Users no longer had the ability to stop the sound once started and there was a risk of repetition, not only between some of the bites and the sequence but really annoying repetition of the bites themselves if you rolled-on, rolled off and then decided to play the entire sequence to have to hear the bite again first.
• Roll-over, button goes from almost transparent to opaque. This was just a greedy visual thing but I think it would have visually isolated each of the individual stories and would have contributed a more empty, transient space where the stories exist.
• That the blue chapter title at the bottom of the sound window was a link with its own visual properties. I tried tinkering with the HTML but to little success, everything I tried either affected the link scheme of the whole page or the code I wrote showed up in the visual window.

Other than that I was fairly pleased with the result. I liked the atmosphere created by the photo and the representation of the people telling their parts of the narrative. I liked that I was able to give as much control as I could to the user in the navigation and in starting and stopping the sounds. Most of all I’m pleased with the adjoining blog and the way this sets up not only a feeling of a real living culture but also a space where the narrative can evolve and grow in a virtual space which spans the diaspora. I really hope part of it takes off in a similar way to the Sonic Memorial Project.

Many thanks to Dean for putting up with my hair-brained ideas and helping find solutions, and to Julian and JHC for trusting me with this part of their overall project.

A day ahead of time

The online documentary is online a day early… I would love to hear what people think of it, not only the content but also the way it feels to move around. I realise that a more sophisticated knowledge of flash would have really helped which has caused some limitations over user control but I hope that the attempt at interactive sonic sound spaces has come through.

For now its waiting for approval from other people involved but I’m looking forward in anticipation for the sense of relief of being completely finished.

Transient website

Posts reporting on the progress of the Jewish documentary have been quiet, mostly because I went into a little melt-down over the technical challenges of sounds, however, I am super pleased to announce that the website should be ready for launch on Friday.

In fact, I’ve put together a blog to act as the interactive platform for the documentary. I’m really hoping that this aspect of the documentary will be taken up and will be a successful in creating an evolving and organic continuation and participatory mode of story-telling of itself. Although I do realise this there is no guarantee.

The idea to include an aspect for submitting stories came from the Sonic Memorial project and from the Us Mob online documentary, although when listening to the producer talk about his experiences he found the Your Mob or participatory space to be the least taken up. He said there were technical difficulties with narrow band access to the internet in trying to send video, and also just, for many complicated reasons, a disinterest in contributing.

I have listed several ways for people to contribute, including getting in touch with me for assistance (we could do a phone interview etc.), just to try and alleviate the obstacles people may have. But the truth is that after I do my best to make the space comfortable and inviting, there is very little I can do but wait and see.

The other recent change I’ve made is to create short (3-5 second) bytes-summaries of the longer sound sequence. These will be activated by mouse roll-over, then to hear the entire sequence users click the person. (Ok- that sounds complicated, but it will all be clear when the website is launched) The reasoning behind it is that I want the navigation to be through sound but I don’t want viewers to be blindly choosing what content they hear. I felt that blind navigation was really not serving my intended design of users choosing their own path, so my hope is that the bytes give a few more cues for user’s choices.

So what have I learnt from this exercise? Well I think I might try and find an entire course in Flash before I attempt to take on a project like this again!

Linda’s vid: predictions of the media future…

Linda has found a youtube video which talks about a lot of the things we discuss in Transient Spaces. It’s interesting and daunting at the same time… the line that struck a cord with me was the idea that everyone is a prosumer (producer + consumer). So what then is the future role of media professionals? It’s so cliche to mark out your ground on a dying trade, but seriously… did we choose the wrong profession?!

interactive sound tutorials

Am starting to think I may be a little ambitious with my vision of creating a sonic browser like interface, (over-estimating possibilities? me…!??) but this seems to be a website full of tantalising tutorials about interactive sound… may have to wait until after I finish my essay though…

Seb Chevel

WordPress seems to be having trouble with links at the moment so sorry about the mess…

A search for “visual sound” and came up with Seb Chevrel’s http://www.seb.cc/ website which houses gorgeous animation clips he’s programed (he’s a programing artist). Note to all Transient Spaces peeps, there are quite a few open-source clips available. I especially liked the idea of this one http://www.seb.cc/spacializer/index.html.

Some of his past work and projects are also well worth a look, including this interesting idea for a collaborative online project http://www.bornmagazine.org/youandwe/. This expereiment also looks a linearity in narrative in a very different way http://www.seb.cc/narrative/index.html

Sonic Browser unpacked

I’ve just had a deeper look at the Sonic Memory Project’s “Sonic Browser” and this time I was specifically interested in the way it was designed structurally for navigation how it encourages users to interact.

To get the obvious out of the way, I think it set up modes for contribution of sounds really well, they clearly set up a phone where people could leave messages with their ideas and reflections which were added to the collection of interviews. This created a really shared, personal and human feeling about the space.

Visually, with the sweeping lines of audio for users to catch, its really engaging. Users then move over options with the mouse in a non self-conscious way making decisions about their selection of narrative. I think at first the selection will always be a bit haphazard which is perfect for giving a self-selected overview, but then as users get used to how to navigate we become more and more attuned to what aspects we’re interested in hearing through nagivational links next to the sound line. For example, after a while, I was interested in hearing mostly about Media, 9/11 and Witnesses. When I clicked on one of these links during an sound-byte all the related soundbytes to “media” were a different colour blue and appeared on my browser.

It was at times, however, a little frustrating that I kept losing my navigation points and sound lines, and also the sound was quite sensitive to mouse-movements and you would lose your line before you were ready. I understand that this may have been deliberate in encouraging users to only listen as long as their attention lasts however, I felt I wasn’t always in control.

I also took note of the length of the sound pieces, which ranged from 30 seconds to 5 minutes which was interesting.

Finally, I think they did really well at encouraging a focussed attention through advising the use of headphones stripping down the information to mere undifferentiated lines implied a never ending amount of stories.

The creator herself spoke in the browser reflecting on the humanity of sound and her love of the medium was clear. Its a beautiful work of sound art, cleverly structured and engaging to be a part of.

Sonic Memorial Project

Given that I’m starting to gather more materials around the Sephardim communities  I also want to think about how I plan to communicate the material. Julian, who I’m working with on this project already has quite a few audio interviews for me but was worried that images may be difficult to get hold of.

However, I’m going to view this as a creative challenge and an opportunity for me to really explore the possibilities for innovative possibilities for audio online.

The Sonic Memorial Project was an example we looked at in Transient Spaces and both Dean and I can see this as being a really powerful idea to adapt for the subject matter of my own online doc.

Do check it out, I love the way audio has been creatively and powerfully thought about for the online medium. As I have a really strong connection with audio/radio this is a really exciting prospect to work with.

The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Australia

This is the closest thing I have found to a website on this topic trying to use “virtual spaces”. The section here is the only section which notes Sephardic communities in Australia, the wonderful thing about this project is that I’m learning so much myself- gotta love being a student!

One thing to note about this site is that it is clearly written by an American and probably aimed at American viewers.

The Virtual Jewish History Tour: Australia
The long dormant Sephardic community was also revitalized in the post-war period. Since the original community’s demise in the late 1800s, Sephardim had a difficult time gaining entry to Australia due to the racist White Australia Policy instituted by the government. In 1956, following the Suez crisis in Egypt, the government began to allowed select Egyptian Jews to enter the country. In ensuing years, pressure from the Jewish communities caused the government to drop its anti-Sephardic stance. By 1969, when the Iraqi government began to target the Jews for persecution, Australia allowed any refugee who could come to Australia to do so.

Transient spaces: Online Doc Project

I’m not sure whether I simply have phenomonal luck in landing into facinating projects or whether my luck is actually that I perceive the projects I land in as facinating, but I’m super excited about the the project for the online documentary for Transient Spaces. Although it was a pre-existing proposal, as far as I know, apart from some basic collection of oral histories there hasn’t been a whole lot of movement… yet! 

The project is:   

RMITUniversity, in partnership with The Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre (JHC) will work with Australian and other Sephardi community members from North Africa, Greece and other nations of origin to support them to record their memories of loss and survival in the Holocaust. Support will be requested from the Besen family foundation to work collaboratively with survivors and their families to produce community based media outcomes, academic publications and an associated and highly innovative website.

The need for the project and how this need was identified

Researchers into the Holocaust have commented on the lack of investigation into the experiences of the Sephardim in the North African context (Abitbol 1989, Ward 1999, Laskier 1992). Ward emphasises that the experience of Central and Eastern European Jewish communities predominate in holocaust discourse despite the diversity of non-Ashkenazi communities affected not in only in North Africa but in Sephardi populations in the Mediterranean lands as a whole. This project will provide a voice for North African and other Sephardim to tell their stories as part of a participatory, collaborative research process.
The community of survivors and their families that the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre represents are keen to reach out to Sephardi communities, North African and others to include them in the life and work of the Centre as partners in the keeping of memory and the fight against racism.

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Its a huge project so I will probably only work on one section (possibly only the Greek aspects) and will probably be working on more of a concept for the development for the entire project into the future.

I had a look at around at other Jewish web-doco type sites, the American Jewish History Museum is OK with quite a but of online content, but I don’t think its exhibitions are really pushing the boundaries of online spaces. Most are pretty linear, with the exception perhaps (although I’ve not had a chance to read all of them) of Still Home, which has some cute house for navigation and nice textures, although the audio is a little cumbersome to access I felt.

I’ll keep an eye out and post more links soon….    I’ll keep looking….