Labyrinth Tales, a #ds106 radio show

Labyrinth Tales promo poster, by Rockylou Productions, licensed CC BY-NC 2.0
Labyrinth Tales promo poster, by Rockylou Productions, licensed CC BY-NC 2.0

 

There were two open, online versions of #ds106 this summer:

The Burgeron Family Fairy Tale Festival
#prisoner106

Though some of us focused on one and others on the other, many of the open, online #ds106 participants came together to create a joint radio show combining themes from both summer #ds106 experiences.

The result is a fairy tale, with some themes from the tv show The Prisoner, which #prisoner106 was based on.

Labyrinth Tales Poster, by Ron Leunissen.
Labyrinth Tales Poster, by Ron Leunissen.

This show was collaboratively written and performed by:
Melanie Barker
Mariana Funes
Christina Hendricks
John Johnston
Ron Leunissen
Rochelle Lockridge
Kathy Onarheim
Vivien Rolfe
Karen Young
plus, a cameo by Christina’s son Sasha as the page who announces the princess

 

Ron Leunissen & I volunteered to edit all the bits together, but really, Ron did the bulk of the work. I did three scenes and he did all the rest! John Johnston did the whole of scene 7, the one that is only sound effects of the Princess in the labyrinth, with no dialogue.

Here is the show, which was premiered on ds106radio on Sunday, Sept. 6, 8pm UK time, during the ds106 Good Spell show. It is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. Please credit “DS106 open players” as the creators.

 

Music credits:

Music by Viv Rolfe:

Motion Picture Plays No. 2A Allegro Agitato, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Motion Picture Plays No. 4A Misterioso e Lamentoso, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Motion Picture Plays No. 3 Agitato Misterioso, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

 

Music by Kevin Macleod (http://incompetech.com), all licensed CC BY 3.0

“Black Vortex”

“Drums of the Deep”

“Life of Riley”

“Pop Goes the Weasel”

“Suonatore di Liuto”

“Teller of the Tales”

“Unseen Horrors”

 

Sound effects credits

Many sound effects were used from freesound.org that were licensed CC0, and those are not credited here. Some sound effects were created by the collaborators on this show themselves. The following are credits for sound effects that require attribution.

These are all from http://freesound.org:

 

“Galloping Horse” by prosounder, licensed with the CC sampling plus 1.0 license

“Fanfare1,” by neonaeon, licensed CC BY 3.0

HighHeelsWendyQuick” by acclivity, licensed CC BY-NC 3.0

sw_mild_surprise” by jppi_Stu, licensed CC BY 3.0

Human-Man-Uh_Oh” by D W, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Royal Sparkle Whoosh Left to Right” by alex@vsi.tv, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Garment Rustle 1” by unreadpages, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Opening_Cardboard_Box,” by Tony Whitmore, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Rummaging through the recycling bin” by daveincamas, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Frantic Searching” by Vedas, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Footsteps 3” by Paul Messier, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Yawn 2,” by lauriesafari, licensed CC BY 3.0

“04099 Magic String Spell,” by Robinhood76, licensed CC BY-NC 3.0

“traditional_bavarian_folk_music2” by reinsamba, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Crowd in a bar (LCR)” by Leandros.Ntounis, licensed CC BY 3.0

“Drinking” by limetoe, licensed CC BY 3.0

“drinking in big gulps,” by mwmarsh, licensed with the CC sampling plus 1.0 license

“Old Man Walking,” by reinsamba, licensed CC BY 3.0

“going down quickly on an inside metal staircase”, by arnaud coutancier, licensed CC BY-NC 3.0

door_slam” by primeval_polypod, licensed CC BY-NC 3.0

Poison Spell Magic,” by qubodup, licensed CC BY 3.0

 

computer voice:

http://www.fromtexttospeech.com

 

 

 

 

Foiled escape attempt

So after my Village morning announcement, Rover came to help me. I was starting to, um, ask questions.

Questions are a burden to others. Answers are a prison for oneself.

That’s what I learned while I was in hospital. They treated me so nicely! Especially after, I am told, I tried to escape. I don’t remember it at all. But the nice doctors gave me an audio recording to let me know what I had tried to do, and what happened. They told me to keep it as a memento of my nice time in the hospital.

So now I’m back in my bungalow and can visit with you all again after several days away. Talky Tina made us some nice beverages so I’ll have to go visit her and share one. Sure could use a nice cold drink after that hospital food.

 

HaveADrinkWith_Christina
The delicious drink my Super True Friend Talky Tina made for me.

 

Credits

Many sounds were from freesound.org licensed CC0; the sound of me throwing off the wires from the heart monitor was made by me. The Rover sound came from the “Schizoid Man” episode. I recorded it using Soundflower like explained in the previous post.

Village Philosopher morning announcement

For audio week during #prisoner106, one of the assignments we were asked to do was to create a morning announcement for the Village like in The Prisoner.

Since I’m the Village Philosopher, mine had some philosophical content. Do you know the Ship of Theseus?

 

The process

I wanted this to sound like it was coming over a radio or through a loudspeaker, so I didn’t want a “clean” voice sound like I usually do. Time to use the crappy phone mic and speaker! I recorded the voice parts on some built-in recorder app on my phone (can’t remember what it was), and then I played that through the phone speaker while holding it near my laptop built in mic and recorded it into Audacity. Two crappy mics and one crappy speaker and voilà.

I wanted to do the same thing with the “technical difficulties” clip, but that would be a bit harder. I recorded that from my system audio using Soundflower. So it went straight into Audacity from there. I would have had to then record it on my phone from my laptop, then back into the laptop using the same procedure as above. I decided to just let that go and have it not sound like it was coming through the loudspeaker.

BTW, here are a couple of sites I found useful when I had to try to remember how to use Soundflower (I didn’t remember):

I recorded the Rover sound using Soundflower as well, while watching The Chimes of Big Ben on the Prisoner106 archive. I then uploaded that Rover sound into a #prisoner106 sound collection that Melanie Barker started, that we can all use and contribute to.

The Rover sound from that episode has music in parts of it, though, and I didn’t want the music, so I had to cut and paste parts of the Rover sequence into my audio file. I tried and tried to make the two parts fit together smoothly, but it just wasn’t working. So I gave up and there’s an obvious jump between parts of the Rover sequence. But hey…who said Rover’s noise had to be smooth?

 

Sounds

Mostly made by me, except:

Birds sound is licensed CC0 from freesound.org, but in case anyone wants to find it (or in case I want to find it again), here it is: http://freesound.org/people/sphion/sounds/158527/

Technical difficulties voice sound was made from here: http://onlinetonegenerator.com/voice-generator.html

The Village announcement chime came from the Prisoner106 archive.

 

Update:IMG_1439

At the end of this broadcast Rover got me, and I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital. And I saw this. What could they possibly be doing to my legs?!

 

 

Prisoner106: Assimilation and introduction

For week 1 of #prisoner106, we were to introduce ourselves to our fellow Villagers via Twitter, Soundcloud, Flickr, and YouTube. Three out of four ain’t bad? I had everything except the video done, but was also working on an audio project for #burgeron106 at the same time. So much storytelling, so little time!

This post will not only serve as my introductions to my fellow Villagers, but also my week 1 review.

Introductions

I have signed up for #prisoner106 as the Village philosopher (click the link to see my ID card, embedded in an earlier blog post). The video I am working on will explain a bit of the backstory there, and a narrative about why I resigned (apparently I am to provide INFORMATION, so it will be there).

Image introduction

My image introduction is in the form of a postcard I made during my first week at the Village. I wanted to show how wonderfully relaxing it is here, and to let my friends back home know they should resign too!

You can’t tell from the picture, but I really am philosophizing here. I’m thinking about how great it is to resign, and coming up with all manner of good arguments for resigning. Because I’m told I will have to soon provide such INFORMATION. See how happy I am philosophizing? Don’t I look relaxed?

VillagePostCard-Juy2015

The process

I uploaded the background image into GIMP, then used the text tool and the Village font I had already installed from dafont.com.

But it was a bit hard to see the text over the image, so I added some backgrounds behind the text. I first created a new layer (transparent), then used the rectangular select tool to make a rectangle. Then I used the bucket tool to fill the rectangle with colour, and adjusted the transparency of the layer so you could still see through the background onto the image.

I did all three rectangular backgounds behind the text that way, but I did them all on the same layer. That meant that when I adjusted the transparency of one, it adjusted all the others the same. Lesson learned for next time.

Another lesson: when I did the rectangular selection and used the bucket fill tool, I was colouring right on the layer and couldn’t move those rectangular backgrounds without moving the whole layer. I need to think about how I might do this later so that I could move the text background rectangles separately. Maybe make separate layers and crop them.

 

Audio introduction

In this clip you can hear me move from a focus on Socratic examination of one’s life, to questioning such questioning, to, well, assimilation in the Village. I have assimilated quite well, I think.

Incidentally, the image I uploaded to Soundcloud was of one of the prisoner106 badges. It’s kind of cool all pixelated like this.

 

the process

This one was pretty easy. I scripted what I was going to say, recorded it into Audacity, and then added the two music tracks. I purposefully wanted the first one to sound creepy, like I was starting to slide away from my usual philosophical views and begin to question them, to see them as possibly strange, possibly sinister. Then, as I began to assimilate I wanted things to sound brighter and happier. Like they do, right?

 

Twitter introduction

Well, for this I am just embedding some tweets about my audio introduction…

Screen Shot 2015-07-05 at 11.14.00 PM

Week 1 reflections

Watching The Prisoner

Unbelievably, I had never heard of this show before #prisoner106. I am really intrigued by it.

One thing that stands out to me is that each episode starts off as if anew. I honestly thought, when I started the second episode (the second in our list on the archive, which is “free for all”), that I had accidentally clicked on the first one again because it started off exactly the same. Number Six resigns again, he is gassed again, he wakes up in the Village again.

The only thing that changes in this opening sequence is Number 2: there is a new Number 2 each episode. But the first few lines said by Number 2 are always the same, the same conversation with Number 6.

What to make of this choice by the show’s creators? One thing is does is more or less get rid of the idea of a linear story arc. There is no single beginning and progression from there. It all starts again, and again, and again, in the same way, with different people in charge.

Okay, so now I’ve just talked myself into one interpretation: the social structures, the governance structures, stay the same no matter who is in charge. The rules are the same, the procedures are the same, the goals are the same. “Revolution” makes no difference–as “Free For All” showed–no matter who is in power, nothing changes. Even when Number 6 was Number 2, no real changes occurred. It all just started over.

Speaking of Number 6 being in charge in “Free for All”: I was also very intrigued by how when he ends up in Number 2’s office and is pushing buttons and telling everyone they’re free now, the woman who was serving him slaps him and says “tick tick” several times. Tick Tick? Obviously a reference to a clock (right?), but why? That is still puzzling me.

What else I did

I did manage one daily create, from Saturday July 4:

DS106 daily create for July 4, 2015:”Draw a picture on a napkin for somebody you love and give it to them. Take a photo and show us?”

Mine is called “Happy Caturday,” and it’s for my son Sasha, who is the biggest cat lover I know.

IMG_1419 (1)

Here is the link to it on Flickr.

 

That’s it for this week. I will finish my video introduction tomorrow, I hope. I will be learning how to make a video that combines both still images and video footage. It’s a first for me!

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