It cracks, it booms, it crunches, someone laughs. Atmospheric sound fields permeate the depths of the listening room, linger, resonate. Voices, noises, sounds react to each other, come together and separate to live on in new constellations. Suddenly, close to the ear, a woman's voice:
"I still want this to be my persona me."
This sentence can hardly convey the feeling between familiarity and strangeness: Only the acoustic realization made it shine.
This is how it was experienced in the three-hour program night tracks linz - produced with the texts, field recordings, voices and a specially curated DJ set by students Alina Baader, Anna Geiger, Maximilian Leeb, Susanna Melem, Veronika Sengstbratl and Julia Witzeneder
The seminar for this radio piece was called Writing for Listening and was offered by radio artist Gaby Hartel and radio play editor Frank Halbig in the office for useful fictions co.lab. After an introduction to the history and theory of radio art, the effects of the medium, the practice of listening to and writing acoustic texts and extensive mentoring, the students produced their acoustic texts. On an excursion to Baden-Baden, the students recorded their manuscripts in the radio play studios of Südwestrundfunk (SWR). The dramaturgy and musical design were then jointly composed into a coherent sound piece that could be heard on SWR online for a year and on Radio FRO in May 2024.
The radio cooperation between the broadcaster and the Media Theory department will continue in the winter semester 2025/26 and summer semester 2026 with the annual focus on tales of joy and disaster. This summer, SWR is once again inviting students to use the radio play studios in Baden-Baden for three days.
Supported by a sound engineer and an editor from SWR, the students will be introduced to professional radio play production under the direction of Gaby and Frank. They learn how to speak in front of the microphone, the techniques of voice and sound direction, recording, editing and mixing: the use of all artistic means to create complex acoustic worlds with the texts they have written themselves. Through the use of acoustic overlays, rhythms, reverberation, echoes and even silence as the protagonists of their story, the students learn what makes radio narratives immersive, magical and informative at the same time, and that they can convey more than linearly produced news broadcasts, readings and discussions.
2022/23
"Dial-A-Thought.
Writing for listening"
2025/26
"Tales of Joy and Disaster"
Forthcoming
"Echo"