LISTENING: ‘On Air’

A collaborative audio project

http://pool.org.au/text/johnt/the_listening_project_description

Listening media is expanding: online, mobile phones, new radio stations, (radio online and on your mobile phone). There are audio tours in galleries, downloadable street tours, on-the-web virtual tours.

Politicians go on ‘listening tours’. Psychiatrists form a ‘listening profession’? Do journalists listen? What about bureaucrats? Who else is? Listening? Eavesdropping? Overhearing? Bugging? Tapping? Or just tuning in? If we listened to the earth what might it say? There’s a train coming? That whales sing? The sea is in this shell?

‘Listening: On Air’ is a collaborative audio project to produce a radio program on the various aspects of ‘listening’.

It’s home is the ABC sponsored social networking site, Pool <http://pool.org.au/> where you can contribute sounds, texts, photos.

‘Listening: On Air’ was initiated by John Tebbutt (La Trobe University) as part of his research with The Listening Project.

Listening: On Air encourages researchers, in particular those associated with The Listening Project, to work your research into a sonic form; it may be through an interview; or a script that can be read; an audio production that represents, or is an abstraction of, the research you have conducted. Or make something new for ‘On Air’.

John is looking for collaborators who can contribute to a listening theme or make exciting audio on listening to share on Pool.

To join ‘Listening: On Air’ at Pool contact John and him know what you’d like to work on: john.tebbutt@latrobe.edu.au

Some possible themes could be:

Listening tours – Audio tours

Eavesdropping – Bugging – Wiretaps

Forensic acoustics – Environmental acoustics

Noise – Deafness – Cochlear technology

Soundscape – Audio art – Sonic branding

Shortwave radio – iPods

BIO: John Tebbutt teaches and researches radio and sound and is based at La Trobe University’s Media and Cinema Studies Program and produces radio programs a as freelance producer. He has been an active participant in the Listening project activities, including symposia, writing and overseeing Listening: On Air.