#SXSW – from pioneers looking for the practical, to pragmatists listening to the incredible

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I think that adding things to these audio posts after they go up might be valuable – but you know, let’s see.  I had a brief twitter conversation with Tom Darlington after posting this, after which I asked him what he thought of the general form… He sent me this email over in reply, which he’s graciously agreed to let me reproduce here.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the audioboo stuff you’ve been doing recently – as I mentioned briefly in our conversation last night, it’s definitely interesting, but there is something I find quite unsettling about it at the same time. I scribbled a few notes down on my way into the office this morning as to why I think it’s an interesting, yet challenging, format. They’re below, in a sort of unordered list –

• So many interactions between people on the web are text based…despite being rich, interactive and fully formed, the relationship is quite often based on something quite limited – text. With this, you can hear what people actually sound like – therefore it’s quite personal – my immediate feeling was one of being a voyeur, which made me uncomfortable
• To use Faris’ term – they help with a kind of transmedia story telling – Diagetic/Dialogic discussion in your first one later appeared in your presentation to Squared – can see how ideas start and become fully formed.
• The contradiction inherent in them however is that despite this kind of ‘working things out’ tone of voice that they have (which is definitely helped by the sounds of stuff in the background, rather than a clinical and silent studio) – they somehow feel more final than a blog post or tweet – and don’t compel me to comment, they are like tablets of stone (sound), like a time capsule
• As a result I feel like they dovetail neatly with artefact cards – an idea that you’re happy enough with to commit to a valuable, rather than transient or disposable, type of media. Was reminded again of the David Shields quote from Fakes – “every artefact rises out of a series of decisions on the part of its maker. To choose one thing and not another in building an object is to hold fast to one idea of how it should be made (and how it should exist) while discarding others.”
• Slightly tangentially they remind me of Dale Cooper a little in Twin Peaks –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j0T9Q73Mv8 .

• Category: rivetings
• Tag: sxsw