Listening, viewing

Radio & hypermedia

Dominique Saint-Martin Stéphane Crozat Isabel Guglielmone Thomas Bottini

INA, GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) Université de Technologie de Compiègne

An « augmented radio »

Problematic & characterisation

Towards an augmented radio I• How can we mobilize the New Information and

Communication Technologies (NICT) and multimedia computerized documents to exploit the value of our cultural, radio, musical and scientific heritage…

• … while conserving the force and the uses of radio, maintaining the structure, the real-time flow and the compositional techniques of traditional radio broadcasting which confer a stability of appropriation?

Towards an augmented radio II

• Our epoch : a generalisation of hypermedia in the cultural and scientific domain.

• Overturn the balance of power currently in force on Internet :– Break with the predominance of writing (temporal

media are in most cases presented as extracts which « illustrate » a narrative).

– Break with extensive « consumerist » listening, aim at a form of listening which brings out the full value of the content.

– Propose new modes of interaction and navigation, new semiotic horizons.

Audio media

• A temporal medium.

• A temporal flow which carries meaning:– semantic ;– perceptible, sensory ;– direction, orientation.

• Mobility.

The hypermedia document

• Non-linear.• Multiple pathways.• Navigation in a store of data by choices,

requests. • Generalisation of the notion of fragment.• A spatial representation of information.

The best of both worlds… ?• Spatialise the temporal flow in order to allow for navigation

and non-linear access.– From listening to a real-time « flow » towards listening to a set

of « stored resources ».• Mastering a variety of competing reading situations.• Facilitate orientation in a documentary dossier and the

assimilation of fragments of information.• Partial, selective, scholarly listening.

Equipping a radio that has become digital• Manipulating the organisation of the temporal flow with a

navigational instrument:– making a personalized listening experience possible; – recovering control over time;– From a broadcasting medium to an interactive medium.

• The space of the hypermedia interface in the service of the time of live speech.

What can be shown visually during the listening?

• Synchronous associated media. • Capture the moment, inscribe it in

memory, locate a moment.• Respect the original writig of a

sound, but enable its multi-modal appropriation.

• Convergence of two sorts of writing :– Traditional radio broadcast writing with

a horizontal flow.– Vertical writing which makes it possible

to enrich with additional information.

Extending the listening experience

• Asynchronous media documentaries.• Publishing and distribution through several

channels: Web, paper, RSS flow..

Towards a new sort of radio productThe contributions of hypermedia documentary engineering

• Articulation of semiotic forms: writing, image and sound associated to a precise segment of the temporal flow.

• Enrichment and not alteration of the radio sound archives.

• Give back a control of time, by spatialization of contents.

• Selection of the most appropriate fragments to constitute a new radio object, and thus to efficiently articulate cultural data.

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Uses & applications

Radio, hypermedia et novel intellectual practices

The GRM was born on the Radio,from Radio,from its means of productionand from its mode of listening.

Some dates…

1942 1948 1958

GRM Research ServiceTRIAL STUDIO

1974

Integration INA (localisation Maison de la Radio)

GRM WebRadio

TRIAL CLUB

1946

2003

Concrete music

1992

GRM Tools V_1Syter

1982

Acousmograph V_1

1988

Studio 123

« A laboratory for radio broadcasting art »

The enrichment of lectures

• Many scholarly sound archives fall into neglect because of the lack of an adequate instrumentarium for their study and critical diffusion.

• Culture of writing: live speech is devalued.• What can be done with the thousands of

hours of recorded scholarly lectures and debates?

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From critical appropriation …• A critical digital workshop around sound:

– Structuring and annotation of the « raw » flow. – The criteria of segmentation already bear witness

to an interpretative project relating to « dramatisation » (narrative aim).

… to hypermédia publication

• The hypermedia broadcasting object makes it possible to articulate various semiotic forms which enrich the hic et nunc event of the lecture.

• A new medium for diffusion, new argumentative experiments.

France Inter: broadcast « 2000 years of history » Patrice Gélinet

• Broadcast December 10th 2008 « The Rights of Man » ( 20 ‘)• Experimenting the possible relations between:

– the syntagm ( radio broadcast sound track)– the paradigm meidum for « storage (the use of data-bases in order to

« enrich » the broadcast.

• “The language of New Media » by Lev Manovich (2001)

A raadio broadcast work enriched by data bases

• A medium for « storage » : data bases• Inversion of the relation paradigm / syntagm• An « encyclopaedic » aim, knowledge of

science via the major media

Example

• ( fragment to be included)

Practical experiments of Interactive Writing in Picardie : the PRECIP

project

• Teaching the practice of digital writing to high-school students

• Using the Webradio software,experimenting the practice of critical documentaries with high-school students