Workshop – Week 10
In this week’s workshop, we covered started by covering some simple elements of sound design, including perspective and social distance.
Perspective:
- Figure: Most important/focus of attention
- Ground: Less prominent, ‘creates the listener’s social world’, setting context
- Field: Provides spatial ‘volume’, background, more distant
Social Distance – your (listener) relationship with the sound:
- Intimate – soft, close, whispering
- Personal – a close friend, relaxed, conversational, familiar
- Informal – still casual, maybe a bit nervous
- Formal – lectures, monotone, less variation, written/prepared speech
- Public – shouty, a voice amongst many
We then moved onto listening to an audio documentary called ‘My Lobotomy’. The piece by NPR primarily follows a man named Howard Dully, uncovering secrets of his own transorbital lobotomy that was performed when he was only a young boy. An extremely confronting composition, I found the audio rather difficult to listen to, perhaps because there was no visuals involved so only having the story to focus on made it all the more intense.
Whilst taking in the audio documentary, we also wrote down the noticeable story elements, sonic elements and sonic qualities, as shown below.
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STORY ELEMENTS |
SONIC ELEMENTS |
SONIC QUALITIES |
| A lobotomy performed by a man on a 12 year old boy –
Howard Dully now on a search to find out what is wrong with him Finds the man’s son who performed surgery on him – “Trans-orbital lobotomy” Son is definitely proud of his father?? Freedman’s fame grew but he wasn’t satisfied The lobotomy performed on a woman in 1950 cured her headaches but gave her the mind of a child. She was incredibly smart before. 97 year old surgeon – does not approve of lobotomy method In 1954, first psychiatric drug prescribed, lobotomy technique was over Requested medical file from museum – contained everything including photo of ice picks in his eyes When his step mother saw the procedure didn’t turn him into the vegetable, she got him out of the house and he became a ward of the state. Talking to dad for the first time in 40 years Dad agrees it was a mistake but doesn’t like to dwell on the negative – refuses to take any responsibility Freedman died of cancer in 1972 Anyone who knows his name thinks of him as a monster themes/focus: mental illness Reconciliation Loss |
Introduction – Piano music layered with speech
Voice recording from 1968 Old music and radio recordings Narration – studio, sometimes played over background conversation |
Old music – grainy and rough
Recordings of the doctor – imperfect and ‘old timey’
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