Mark Blevis

I feel like I was in a car racing down a highway lined with amazing people and incredible ideas.

I didn’t get to meet everyone or take in everything that was available, yet the people I did connect with and the sessions that did resonate with me proved to me that this was the conference to attend.

I have long preached the use of ambient sound as a way to provide a backdrop to an audio piece.  However, Jens Jarisch’s session, The Inner Sound of the Outer World, has changed the way I think about the use of ambient sound for storytelling and effect.  His approach makes the ambient sound a character in the production and allows the ambient sound to tell elements of the story.  He played several examples of how he has used this approach in his documentary work in order to take the listener inside the minds and bodys of the foreground characters.  In most cases, he has used the naturally occurring ambient sound instead of adding it in post production.  However, he did play and discuss an example of how he has done this with post-production trickery.  The emotional impact of one piece was so incredible that a few of us techy-types asked a series of questions on how he did it so effectively and naturally (did you use a low-pass filter?).

I attended the first twenty minutes of Jonathan Goldstein’s session before having to leave for an appointment.  I had started to wonder if I should actually keep my appointment as Jonathan got to the meat of how to build a story that doesn’t appear to be a story at all and played an excerpt of a piece by Scott Switzer in which Scott told the story of his daughter’s first swimming lesson.  I wish I could say more about the session.  I kept my appointment.

The conference ended with the Kitchen Girls sharing a few of their favourite pieces of audio and video content followed by the reading of a short essay by Brian Eno about the impact of singing.

Some guitars, a bass, violin and a cool lute-like instrument from Russia materialized on stage and the room erupted into two songs recommended by Eno: Sixteen Tons and With a Little Help From My Friends.  Who knew that us audio geeks are such great musicians and singers?!  It was a great way to wrap-up the formal program of the conference.  You couldn’t help but feel connected to everyone and every idea as we all belted out the songs.

There is so much more to say and process.  I’ll have to post more later on.  I have to get ready for the da before I meet Jens for breakfast.