Audio Playground 5 – Audio Self-Portrait in Costume

Due Date: April 1
Course Points: 3000

Time on Task: 90 minutes (or less)

The Audio Playground assignments this term are intended to be fun sonic experiments in storytelling. Have fun, be creative, and surprise us in engaging ways.

This term, we are borrowing 5 of Sara Geis’s Audio Playground Prompts, available on the web for anyone needing an eardrum tickle. Here’s what she writes about the purpose of the prompts:

Each week, I’m gonna send you an audio assignment and some good links…. The point isn’t to make something good — though fine if you do — but to make something, and maybe even surprise yourself in the process. Let’s make room for the weird, the funny, the slightly tedious, the sexy, the surprisingly sad, and the totally no big deal. The project’s inspired, in part, by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s Learning to Love You More from the early 2000s.  About that project, they wrote:  “Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments were intended to guide people toward their own experience.” Ditto, about this one. Some of you might want to record the assignments in one take. Or give yourself, say, half an hour start-to-finish. Others of you might want to use this opportunity to craft something more intricate. Figure out what you need from this, then do it that way. Sarah Geis

Your Task (Audio Playground Prompt Assignment #5)

Give yourself 15 minutes to assemble a costume from stuff around the house. Then, make a 1-minute audio self-portrait.

Remember: Follow the Criteria/Specifications, as Cripps does grade using those!

Need some help figuring out how to approach the prompt? Cripps recommends Shira Kresch’s “Virtual Costume Party” and Alex Lewis’ “Jazz Lizard” as rich, inventive responses to the prompt. Find them on the Geis’s results page.

HAVE FUN and ROCK this last AUDIO PLAYGROUND FOR US!!!

If you need a GarageBand Template to help get started with editing, use our Interview I template and make changes. No script required for this assignment, but you might want a rough one anyways.

  • Runs 0:45-1:15 minutes long (roughly 1 minute!) – 500 Points
  • Response clearly (albeit creatively and perhaps unusually) engages with the prompt – 1000 Points
  • Audio is edited in some fashion that goes beyond “hit record, collect audio, make WAV/MP3” – 500 Points
  • Exported .MP3 added to class Transistor Show as Season 10 – 250 Points
  • 300-word ePortfolio Blog Post explains the prompt in your words, describes your idea for the Response, and includes the CMM225 Category – 500 Points
  • Episode on Transistor embedded in above ePortfolio Blog Post, along with a Screenshot of the GarageBand edit screen – 250 Points