ASMR

SOUND ENGINEER 1: Okay, five…four…three…two

WILL: This is FreshEd a weekly podcast that’s makes complex ideas in educational research easily understood. I’m your host, Will Brehm. Today we air the next episode of Flux a FreshEd series where graduates turn their research interests into narrative-based podcasts. This is FreshEd, a weekly podcast that’s makes complex ideas in educational research easily understood. I’m your host, Will Brehm. This is FreshEd. This is FreshEd.

PETER: (whisper) Fresh Ed… Fresh Ed…. This is Fresh Ed… welcome. Do you like that sound? Do you hear it? Does it give you goose bumps or make you feel tingly? Studies show that this reaction is experienced by around 20% of humans. It’s a reaction called ASMR – Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response… the effect of sound on the brain. You see, sound can do very cool things to the body.

WILL: What the fuck are you doing?

PETER: This is like the abstract, Will – giving a sense of what I’m doing, setting out the (mocking) “thrust of the main argument”

WILL: Right? But what the fuck are you actually doing?

PETER: (normal volume) playing with sound, telling stories – don’t you think it’s cool? Imagine telling ethnographic stories like this…

WILL: I’m on board. You know that PETER, I famously love a podcast, but others might Need some convincing.

PETER: Well, funny you should say that.. I’m hoping I can do some convincing

WILL: Oh, so that’s what you’re doing.

PETER: Yes, and it’s about to start (getting quieter) so you might want to turn the volume down… (whisper) no really, you might want to…

SIMON MCBURNEY: But, this is the telling of a story of a story. And, when you tell a story you choose those things that are interesting, in other words you are revealing something about yourself the storyteller, what you are interested in.

GREEN ROOM

BRETT: Hi everybody, my name’s Brett and I’m playing the part of Brett. I’m a technical producer, I’m technically a producer for FreshEd Flux and I guess that means I like playing with sound editing a bit behind the scenes and trying to help all of the Flux fellows be as creative and imaginative with their sonic compositions as possible.

WILL: Hello everyone, my name is Will. I’ll be playing Will from FreshEd you probably would have recognised me from the beginning. I’m really happy to have been involved in Peter’s episode and I can say that I’m under no duress. I’m safe and well, and I’m holding a newspaper dated with today’s episode…. [whisper] help me!

JO: I’m Jo, I play the character Jo the Producer, she’s very kind-hearted if a little controlling. She works closely with Peter on the script and helps him to reign it in. Sometimes she gives him some good ideas, but sometimes she tries to convince him her bad ideas are really good ideas

PETER: Oh yeah, I didn’t say who I’m playing. Well, I guess I’m just playing me

JO: You’re the wizard behind the curtain.

PETER: I’m the who?

(WIZARD OF) OZ

OZ: “I am OZ, the Great and Terrible. Why do you seek me?”…(trembling)“I am OZ ,the Great and Terrible,”

PETER: (narrator voice): said the little man, in a trembling voice.

OZ: “But don’t strike me – please don’t – and I’ll do anything you want me to.”

PETER: (narrator voice): Our friends looked at him in surprise and dismay.

Dorothy: “I thought Oz was a great Head,”

PETER: (narrator voice): said Dorothy.

SCARECROW: “And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady,”

PETER: (narrator voice): said the Scarecrow.

TIN MAN: “And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast,”

PETER: (narrator voice): said the Tin Woodman.

LION: “And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire,”

PETER: (narrator voice): exclaimed the Lion.

OZ: “No, you are all wrong,”

PETER: (narrator voice): said the little man meekly.

OZ: “I have been making believe.”

Dorothy: “Making believe!”

PETER: (narrator voice): cried Dorothy.

Dorothy: “Are you not a Great Wizard?”

OZ: “Hush (whispering)my dear,”

PETER: (narrator voice):  he said.

OZ: (whisper)“Don’t speak so loud, or you will be overheard – and I should be ruined. I’m supposed to be a Great Wizard.”

Dorothy: “And aren’t you?”

PETER: (narrator voice): she asked.

OZ: “Not a bit of it, my dear; I’m just a common man.”

JO: because it is such a montage chopped up. Brechtian approach, I feel like there has to be a guiding thread regardless.

PETER: So I’m kind of the wizard, but in front of the curtain a bit like Professor Marvel, or Dr Peter, your guiding voice, just so that all of this exploration makes some kind of sense. But don’t worry, not just that rational kind of sense. So now that I’ve given you a flavour of the episode and introduced some of the main characters (who you might not really hear from again). Let’s jump into the next sound-scene, where we see the kindling of my ideas. (news broadcaster voice) Back to you in the studio, Will.

KINDLINGS OF THE SOUNDOSPHERE

WILL: …these research sort of productions connect to art. And I would also add entertainment, because you do need to think about the engagement of the audience in a way. And it’s sort of working at that nexus between sort of research entertainment and art that you’re, you know, trying to come up with a 30 minute audio show that is rigorous in its production, is scholarly in its pursuit, is entertaining to listeners, but is also artistic in the use of the medium in which we’re working in. It, to me, it’s such a fascinating space to have grown into…[fades out]

PETER: and that’s what’s so great about it. If our aim is to communicate our research, to generate and create knowledge then podcasting maybe opens up new avenues. For me, it’s just that traditional academic writing and publishing doesn’t seem to always be about finding the best way to do this. What are the possibilities then that the soundosphere? Yes, I did just call it the soundosphere. What are the possibilities that the soundosphere offers us? It’s fine “soundosphere” will stick, just go with it. The important thing for me is to think about what this space can allow us to do. So put on your headphones, take one deep breath, and come with me on a journey of exploration. Let me be your guide, not the annoying type with the umbrella who gets in the way on the pavement

GUIDE: Here you can see the Coliseum built by the Roman empire

PETER: but one that’s keen for you to experience the vastness of possibilities that open out before us in the soundosphere and one that is keen to walk with you from their own experiences.  (Said as an aside) Trust me, it’s best that you do have a guide, at times, this is going to feel like a late-night walk in the park.

PETER: I don’t know when I first “tuned into” sound – perhaps it comes from not being able to stand the sound of silence. I’m not talking here about the 1964 Simon and Garfunkel hit. I don’t really have many feelings on that one, either way. Though, I guess if I had to say overall, I’d fall down on a positive side. There’s something nice I think about singer songwriter music. You know, it’s not overly produced. But anyway, perhaps I tuned into sound growing up, listening to the experimental sounds of Kraftwork. Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre – thanks, Mum and Dad. My prog rock foundations, allowing me to segue into Sigur Rós, Public Service Broadcasting and Radiohead, graduating onto Vocal Trance when I decided it was nice to be happy! What all this music has in common is that it is less about the lyrics, but more about what the sound does to your brain, how the sound becomes in your body.

MUSIC DROP: Breathe, and let me go.

PETER: There is a storytelling in and through the sound. (self-depreciating) Of course, there was… OK there is lots of pop and musical theatre thrown in too, I’m not that cool. But even there you can’t tell me that (mimicking Richard Burton) Richard Burton’s dramatic narration (normal) and Jeff Wayne’s aliens in the war of the world don’t send a shiver down your spine. My interest also comes from theatre classes, thanks Ms Cooper and learning to pay attention to the key role played by sound and music and the crafting of stories. Nowhere have I seen this more expertly done than by Complicté in their 2018 show The Encounter, a story about the transcendence of self, the break-down of barriers and the encounter with the other. In exploring these themes, it’s not inconsequential that Simon McBurney and his team decided to explore this through sound.

COMPLICTTÉ MONTAGE

SIMON MCBURNEY: But, this is the telling of a story of a story. And, when you tell a story you choose those things that are interesting, in other words you are revealing something about yourself the storyteller, what you are interested in.

Part of the theme in The Encounter for me was thinking about how we listen. And we know, you know, we have our ears and our faculty of hearing but listening is a kind of conscious act and so it requires exactly you are listening out for things and the brain’s principal function is actually not necessarily to make things work but to inhibit. So, one of the things that interested me in The Encounter is getting inside the head of someone who is gradually, his consciousness is taken apart bit by bit to the point that he has to, he begins to listen or really has to listen in a new way.

The other man says they play loud to keep out the din of the world.

When you put the headphones on you get the feeling of being alone, you have to reproduce the feeling of being alone, despite being in an audience of several hundred people, and this does seem to work. And so, it’s a very odd thing asking an audience to have an individual experience within a collective.

For example, can you listen to the future? Is that possible? We understand what we mean by listening to the past, listening to objects and you know we can listen to spaces, but I’m interested in whether listening can, you know, is this an important way in which we can change our consciousnesses?

PETER: I also take inspiration from Walter Benjamin, not only for his musings and the possibilities of radio communication, but also for his fragmentary, repetitious and layered approach to storytelling; understanding that meaning emerges through interaction, and montage.

PETER: Sorry– can I just get this. Hello?

JON HOLMES: My name’s Jon Holmes.

PETER: (confused) Hi, Jon. Sorry. Do I know you?

JON HOLMES: Jon Holmes, the creator of The Skewer on BBC Radio four?

PETER: No way! I love that podcast. It’s like a satirical river of sound

JON HOLMES: (overlapping) a satirical river of sound

PETER: Exactly.

JON HOLMES: It’s a sort of comedy concept album. And what we do is we take news and current affairs, and we mix it.

PETER: Yeah, it’s great. I listen all the time

JON HOLMES: with film and TV and pop culture and music and so on and so forth, in order to make satirical points of jokes and so-on and…

PETER: (perplexed/frustrated) Yeah…No…I listen I love it. It’s honestly one of my favourite podcasts. But listen, Jon, I’m gonna have to go because.. well I’m actually recording my own podcast at the moment.

JON HOLMES: sound can get a message across even when you don’t have any traditional actors or presenters

PETER: I mean I know I’m not classically trained, I only did drama in high school, but I think I’m doing alright

JON HOLMES: Anyway, work really well.

PETER: Oh, thanks. will do

JON HOLMES: we’re going through a dark forest. We have to go through it.

PETER: Oh, me too…well, a park, but still, maybe see you there?

JON HOLMES: It works very well.

PETER: All right. Bye for now.

WALKING IN THE PARK (AT NIGHT)

SIRI/ALEXA: Like that, late night shortcut through the park, one gate to the other. It’s easy. You’ve walked this way hundreds of times before, except it’s dark, it’s night time, it’s wet, and you begin to feel alone. You’re aware of all the sounds all happening at once. That’s it. You’re sure someone is following you. You begin to panic. There’s no linearity here. It’s the layering that brings on the panic. And what’s that? A more mechanical sound. It’s getting closer. You hear it approaching. Someone on a bike. They are not slowing down. They’re coming straight at you. Someone is following you. It’s okay. They’ve gone past maybe it was all in your head. You’re still hyper aware, but you can see the gate. You’re getting closer, the lights in the street pouring in, the exits close and just like that, you’re back to reality,

PETER: like that late night shortcut through the park, one gate to the other. It’s easy. You’ve walked this way a hundred times before, except it’s dark, it’s night time, it’s wet, and you begin to feel alone. You’re aware of all the sounds… all happening at once. That’s it. You’re sure. Someone is following you. You begin to panic. There’s no linearity here. It’s the layering that brings on the panic. And what’s that? a more mechanical sound. It’s getting closer. You hear it approaching. Someone on a bike. They’re not slowing down. They’re coming straight at you. Someone is following you. It’s okay. They’ve gone past maybe it was all in your head. Still hyper aware. But you can see the gates are getting closer, the lights in the street pouring in, the exits close. And just like that. Back to reality.

PETER: (shouting) BOOO! (normal volume) Did I scare you? Sorry, but I hope I did. That proves the point, right? Sound is compelling. So you see, there’s power in the soundosphere. There’s something there in the texture and the layers, but there’s also something in the white space (pause) in the silence (pause) the discomfort of silence (pause) the intentionality of silence (pause) the power of silence (pause) And I’m not sure how you could achieve this through writing. Perhaps you could leave some blank pages, but you would just skip through these. I’m not sure that would really work. For me there seems to be something powerful in the sound of silence.

SON MATEMÁTICAS, ES LO MISMO EN INGLÉS Y ESPAÑOL

PETER: (conversational) Okay, that’s El Condor Pasa… but you get the picture, copyright is still a thing here in the soundosphere… come on, it’s not Utopia!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Next Station, Farringdon

PETER: Do you ever wonder if people can overhear what you’re listening to on your headphones. I really hope not sometimes! Anyway, I’m on my way to do an observation. I’m carrying out some ethnographic fieldwork in a school with children who all come from different multilingual backgrounds, and I’m hoping that in this little next sound-scene you’l really hear how sound can show some of the struggles faced by these children, in a way that is perhaps a bit more visceral than were it written.

TEACHER: Good morning class. How are you today? Remember that today we have matemáticas ¿Estamos listos para aprender?. I want you to open your book on page five. Recuerden que la clase pasada estuvimos viendo multiplicaciones. Así que quiero que trabajen en el ejercicio diez. Peter? Are you? There? Peter?

PETER: (nervous) p- p- page five?

TEACHER: página cinco, Peter, sí te acuerdas de las multiplicaciones estuvimos viendo eso la semana pasada.

PETER: ummmm

TEACHER: Pero Peter, son mathemáticas, es lo mismo en inglés y en español, ¿cómo no vas a entender?

PETER: (increasingly desperate) I don’t. It’s just, it’s, it’s kind of hard to

TEACHER: (angry) Peter, ves, eso es lo que pasa cuando tú te dedicas a conversar todo el rato y no pones atención cuando debieses tiene que estar trabajando mira aquí está el ejercico mira página cinco y aquí están las multiplicaciones ¡recuerda!

PETER: (gasp of frustration transitioning to a couple of deep breaths)

MEDITATIONS ON THE SOUNDOPHERE

PETER: (as guru) Take one deep breath. That’s all we need to be present in the here and now. One deep breath, a breath we share that allows us to enter into an encounter with the other. One deep breath. As we begin this guided meditation, I invite you to maintain this level of calm, to feel yourself grounded in time and space, in the here and now and engage with these thoughts about the soundosphere, the nexus between research, entertainment and art. Take one deep breath.

UTA: So I’m thinking about the nexus between research entertainment and art.

KIKE: Podcasts or sound as sitting at the nexus between research entertainment and art.

BRETT: the nexus between research entertainment and art.

BEAW: Podcast, sound as sitting at the nexus between research, entertainment and art.

UTA: The first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m struggling a bit with the notion of entertainment, but perhaps that’s because I’m stuck in conventional ways of thinking about how one shares research, or maybe I’m even stuck in conventional notions of what it means to do research, what research is.

JO: I think there’s a difference between the academic mind the mind of literature reviews, citing sources, compiling data, writing up of results, framing your work in terms of the research field, in terms of other theorists and the creative mind, how one idea sparks another, saying something that means something else, the world of tangential thinking, where sounds conjure images.

KIKE: It’s just that there’s so many things you can do with audio that you cannot do with the text.

UTA: So I think for me, this is more about engagement, and specifically using, for example, my voice and audio, but also images, to engage a wider group of people, but also even if I’m only talking to the more narrow audience of academic researchers. It’s about trying to make my findings, or how I share my findings, to make it more engaging.

BEAW: Podcasts are really good to connect like research and like normal people who who’s not in academia.

WILL: The dissemination of knowledge. Of course, it needs to be done to different audiences. And so an audience of other researchers necessarily has to be in the, you know, an academic community or a research community. And I, you know, we need that definitely. But there’s also the public audience, the people that don’t necessarily spend day to day in the academic space, reading journal articles and thinking about how you can present your ideas, that are you know, that are entertaining, is a really great way to disseminate your ideas and have a larger impact on society.
IJAZ: There is a change or shift in making the research more accessible to not just scholars and the ivory towers, but more accessible to policy people. I mean, lay people in any stakeholders in the research.

KIKE: For example, interviews would have the, would be charged with the intention, the emotions of the person when they express their ideas, which would be definitely useful for a deeper understanding of those ideas.

UTA: So it’s about making research more accessible, more appealing. And what I specifically like about voice is that it makes the experience that one shares about doing research and about understanding things while doing research, while being in the field, it makes it more personal. It makes it less an exercise in intellectual, scholarly kind of sharing, or scholarly thought, rational thought. It brings over an element of the embodied emotional experience that fieldwork is, but also that is always part of learning. And to me to do research is an experience of learning.

MIGUEL: And at the same time this comes at a moment when the humanities and the social sciences have seen the blooming of decolonial ways of undoing genres that are linked to Empire, nationhood and capitalist forms of production and consumption. And so, in this sense, podcasts allow the exploration of alternative ways of narrating, arguing, but also representing. They gave a sense of intimacy and put participants’ voices at the centre without apparently so much mediation by the  “omnipresent expert” as the only source of authority and legitimacy.

JON: And that’s why I think soundscapes and different perspectives of presenting information work really well in audio terms.

JO: We certainly need to know the facts, but we need to hear them in a way that moves us.

IJAZ: Here we are literally transgressing this idea that research should be objective, or even questioning what objectivity is.

MIGUEL: Ethnography has always entailed telling stories about people. It is a political mode of knowledge production that places social actors at the centre, but it is also a mode of production that does not hide the role of the researcher subjectivity in the making of such stories. And so, ethnographic storytelling has never gone shy about foregrounding the researchers’ interactions with her own participants. And it has also involved various writing choices to convey those stories in ways that may generate among readers feelings and reactions similar to those experienced in the so-called fieldwork.

WILL: Thinking about how science or research can be multifaceted and how it has unfortunately been reduced to a very particular sort of medium and mode, you know, this empirical sort of research that has to be published in Q1 journals.

BRETT:  These multimodal, multi-mediated elements, the sonic worlds that are created are lost when we try to share research in traditional academic publishing.

MIGUEL: And so podcasts may also be seen as instrumental to the removal of this ideologically motivated separation of storytelling from scientific production.

UTA: And as I said, that’s always emotional and embodied. And I think there’s a lot of that that comes across in the researcher’s spoken voice, but probably much less in the written voice that, for example, we have in an academic paper.

IJAAZ: I think of it as a rhetoric, as an art of communicating. It is just a medium, instead of having texts. And sound do provide certain dimensions which is not always captured in writing. So, I think it is a new shift in translating back that knowledge.

UTA: It’s definitely an art for me. So, I like the notion of art because, for example, speaking well is an art, or reading well is an art.

WILL: And so, I think that just opens the door to using all different types of artistic modes and mediums to figure out what affordances they might have to express ideas in different ways that would be considered scientific and research-based.

SIMON: I’m interested in whether listening can, you know, is this an important way in which we can change our consciousnesses?

CHUNDOU: I feel like we as humans just still really want to put things into little boxes and really clean labels. But, the magic of something like educational podcasting is that it can be all of these things and more if we just let them be these things.

NOT A CONCLUSION

PETER (from zoom): it doesn’t make sense to write the conclusion until you’ve got to the conclusion necessarily, because it’s something that emerges out of the resonance between the parts, and as the parts come together and get formulated and developed, that resonance changes. So, I think if I jump ahead to the conclusion and I foreclose that prematurely, then it’s going to strangle the oxygen and the life out of the potential of the narrative to get there. So, it’s kind of giving it a bit of space until, until we get to the end, to then see what has emerged, or been able to emerge from this sonoric exploration.

PETER: So, maybe what I find most appealing about the soundosphere is that it’s a space for the “yes and” for the non-foreclosure, for a recognition of the multiplicity, the multi-valence and the multi-vocality of the world around us. And whilst there is no such thing as a “real representation”, the soundosphere perhaps gives us some tools to represent social realities in their complexity, paying attention to affect, to the body – the messy human dimensions that are often minimized elsewhere.

PETER: (lightly) Uff! Well, that all just got a bit sincere, didn’t it. So…I guess umm… TTFN, see you anon. Oh, actually one more important thing-

MUSIC DROP: Breathe, and let me go.

CODA

JO: (on Zoom) Hello?

PETER: So for example…

JO: Oh! You cut out there

PETER: Oh no! So it’s like using… yeah, it’s not aesthetic it’s mediated and it’s using the… drawing attention to the mediation I think is, is a political act, because it’s already kind of…

JO: You were going to say something really profound and you cut out again.

PETER: Am I back?

JO: You’re back.

PETER: I think for me it’s not aesthetic, right? I think that’s what it boils down to. It’s not an aesthetic endeavour, it’s not about making things sound nice, hence, you know, the absurdist clangy kind of tone and humorous tongue-in-cheekness. It’s looking more about like technologies and mechanisms and understanding that if everything is mediated, then we can mediate it otherly.

PETER: (in recording studio) and that’s where gets cut in and the episode ends.

SOUND ENGINEER 2: You happy with that?

PETER: Yep!

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