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Articles Conference Reviews |
2008CC2RodrigoEditing Sound as Text: The Waveform Alphabet
Salvo was rhetorically looking at what he was trying to do with podcasting while looking at audio waveforms. His work began while editing visual sound wave representations of speech, specifically looking for misplaced “ess” sounds. Salvo began to visually distinguish them from the remainder of the content. The aural text was available from editing because Audacity gives a visual representation of sound waveform. He was breaking down the sounds into phonemes, making a synthesis, a confluence of senses. This got Salvo thinking, is this another alphabetic system supporting multi-modal composing? A post-textual literate system? He demonstrated how Audacity saves its files as a series of independent sound files. Salvo asks might speech ever replace alphabetic? Might soundwave form replace the alphabet? Part of this project was based on an assignment in one of Salvo’s classes. Central to the podcasting assignment was the desire for his students to create worlds that audiences could inhabit. He was impressed with the students’ capability and interest in doing; in the students' sharing what their lives are and what we don’t see, or hear, about those lives. He found them rewriting their own scripts because “it didn’t sound right.” Salvo concluded with a projection of how working with audio might be a way to “make basic writing expensive.” To give the student the equipment and say “I trust you” as a way to bolster their self-confidence in communicating with others. I was excited by three things in Salvo’s presentation:
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