GFEM Sound Experience

[Source: by GFEM, Third Coast International Audio Festival, Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), October 17, 2010]

This multimedia reel was originally presented at the Grantmakers in the Arts Annual Conference on October 17-20, 2010 in Chicago.  The project was a collaborative effort, developed in partnership with Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media, the Association of Independents in Radio and the Third Coast International Audio Festival.  Enjoy!

Content

Studs & Jimmy
by Alan Hall (3:00)
Produced for the Third Coast’s 2009 Chicago Sound Drops project
Jimmy Yancey, the blues pianist and White Sox groundsman, and Studs Terkel, the broadcaster and author, may have lived at different ends of Chicago but they're both as integral a part of the city as the El.


The Corner: 23rd and Union
by Jenny Asarnow with KUOW-FM and Hollow Earth Radio (1:37)
Produced for the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 (MQ2) an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Corner is an installation across a city block located at the epicenter of Seattle’s historically African-American community that inspires citizen storytelling and engagement. Cell phone, radio, and Web technology combine to document, broadcast, capture, and archive the contemporary history of this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.


Chain of Missing Links
by Eve Abrams (3:00)
Produced for the 2010 Third Coast ShortDocs Challenge: Book Odds
Eve Abrams was inspired by the heartfelt reactions of her first grade students to the tragedy currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and in their coastal communities. This piece was recorded and produced in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Gulf Coast Region of the U.S.A. Javen Porter, Jonathan Cohn, and Kennedi Fraise are the students featured in this piece and Eileen Flemming contributed audio.


Mapping Main Street: Main Street Cinemas
by Kara Oehler/Mapping Main Street and Rachel Temkin/Radio Rookies Shortwave Program (4:50)
Produced for the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 (MQ2), an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mapping Main Street is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of America through stories, songs, photos and videos recorded by everyday citizens, journalists and artists on actual Main Streets. This new form of place-based documentary creates a democratic forum through which the country can reflect upon itself. Created by: Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann, Jesse Shapins and James Burns. www.mappingmainstreet.org Since its launch on NPR in August 2009, nearly 700 Main Streets in all 50 states have been documented with photos and videos contributed by hundreds of people across the country. The project continues to be used today by citizens, educators and public radio outlets such as: the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, WNYC's Radio Rookies, middle and high school teachers all over the United States, and USC's Annenberg School for Communication, among others.


Open Outcry
by Ben Rubin (7:00)
Produced for WNYC’s The Next Big Thing
Sound designer and multimedia artist Ben Rubin employs the cacophony of the New York Mercantile Exchange to create a musical piece commemorating the reopening of the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, which was closed after the events of September 11th.  Open Outcry won the Best Documentary: Honorable Mention Award in the 2003 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.


Mapping Main Street: In Arizona Town, Main Street Is a Border Crossing
by Kara Oehler and Ann Heppermann, with James Burns, and Jesse Shapins (6:37)
The end of Main Street in San Luis, Ariz., is a border crossing station that connects the city to San Luis Rio Colorado in Mexico.  Aired on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.


 
I Didn’t Know That
by Tom Tenney (2:55)
Produced for the 2010 Third Coast ShortDocs Challenge: Book Odds
I Didn't Know That is a sonic exploration of state-controlled "truths," created almost entirely from appropriated public domain educational and military-training films.


Women of Troy
by Lu Olkowski/In Verse in association with PRI’s Studio 360, WNYC-FM, and Ted Genoway of the Virginia Quarterly Review (4:57)
In Verse is a multi-media project that combines poetry, photography and audio footage to create "documentary poems" for radio, the web, print and iPhone. It was produced as part of AIR’s Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 (MQ2) project, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This installment features poet Susan B. A. Somers-Willett and photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally as they document America’s “dream deferred” through the lives of working mothers in Troy, New York.

 
Collaborative Partners

Third Coast selections for GFEM Sound Experience

Chain of Missing Links, by Eve Abrams • Studs & Jimmy, by Alan Hall • I Didn’t Know That, by Tom Tenney • Open Outcry, by Ben Rubin

The Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) is a Chicago-based independent arts organization, recognized internationally for showcasing radio stories that pique the imagination and explore the important issues of our time. The TCIAF cultivates a growing international culture of listening, by bringing exceptional audio documentaries of all styles to audiences worldwide, supporting producers creating this fresh and vital work, and inspiring a new generation of makers. Find us on air at Chicago Public Radio (91.5 FM) for our weekly program Re:sound, in theaters and galleries in Chicago and beyond for lively listening events and online at www.thirdcoastfestival.org where you can browse (with your ears) through our vast library of audio documentaries of all stripes.

The TCIAF is made possible with lead support from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Festival's educational partner is the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. The TCIAF was founded in 2000 by Chicago Public Radio.

Third Coast Participating Producers:

Eve Abrams is a New Orleans-based freelance writer, radio producer and educator who loves good stories. You can hear more of her work on NPR News, as well as shows such as The Tavis Smiley Show, B-Side Radio, and This American Life. You can find Abrams’s writing in offBeat magazine, Fourth Genre, and Wesleyan magazine, among other publications. eveabrams@gmail.com

After eight years as a music producer at the BBC, Alan Hall set up as an independent supplying documentaries, music programmes and ‘impressionistic features’ to a number of BBC networks and international broadcasters. His programs have received a number of awards, including two Prix Italias, a Prix Bohemia, a Third Coast award and several Sonys. His company, Falling Tree, has established a wide reputation for nurturing feature-making talent. alan.hall@fallingtree.co.uk

Ben Rubin is a media artist based in New York City. His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the San Jose Museum of Art, among otherss. He has been a frequent collaborator with artists and performers including Laurie Anderson, Ann Hamilton, Arto Lindsay, and Steve Reich. Rubin's installation Listening Post (2002, with statistician Mark Hansen) won the 2004 Golden Nica Prize from Ars Electronica as well as a Webby award in 2003. He received a B.A. from Brown University in 1987 and an M.S. in visual studies from the MIT Media Lab in 1989. Rubin teaches at the Yale School of Art, where he was appointed critic in graphic design in 2004. benrubin@earstudio.com

Tom Tenney is a producer, performer, writer, digital media professional and copyright activist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a veteran of the New York City underground performance scene, and the founder of the RE/Mixed Media Festival, a yearly celebration of artistic collaboration and creative appropriation. http://inc.ongruo.us/
tom@toxicpop.com

 

AIR Selections For GFEM Sound Experience

The Corner: 23rd and Union, by Jenny Asarnow with KUOW-FM and Hollow Earth Radio • Mapping Main Street: Main Street CinemasMapping Main Street: In Ariz. Town, Main Street Is a Border Crossing by Kara Oehler and Rachel Temkin • , by Kara Oehler and Ann Heppermann • Women of Troy, by Lu Olkowski/In Verse in association with PRI’s Studio 360, WNYC-FM, and Ted Genoway of the Virginia Quarterly Review

The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), formed in 1988 by a group of ten independent producers sitting around a kitchen table in NYC, has since grown into a global social and professional network of 750 producers – both independent and those employed by leading media organizations.  AIR's constituency represents an extensive range of disciplines, from NPR news journalists and reporters, to sound artists, station station-based producers, podcasters, gearheads, media activists, and more. Entrepreneurial innovation is what drives the organization and, in this 21st century world, its members are rapidly diversifying and expanding their craft as they cut new edges in digital public media. http://www.airmedia.org/

AIR Participating Producers

Jenny Asarnow produces talk shows and youth programs at KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, WA, and DJs at the Pacific Northwest's freeform online-only community station, Hollow Earth Radio. She created the MQ2 project The Corner, an interactive documentary / art installation made with neighbors around a Seattle street corner. Asarnow is also a one-woman band called Sweet Potatoes. jenny.asarnow@gmail.com

Ann Heppermann is a Brooklyn-based independent radio/multimedia documentary producer, transmission sound artist and educator.  Her stories, produced with Kara Oehler, air nationally and internationally on National Public Radio, the BBC, and on numerous shows including: This American Life, Radio Lab, Marketplace, Morning Edition, Studio360 and many others.  Ann is a Peabody award-winning producer who also has received awards from Associated Press, Edward R. Murrow, and the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Currently, she teaches audio, documentary and sound art at Sarah Lawrence College.  This year she is a 2010  Rosalynn Carter for Mental Journalism Fellow and will be making a multimedia documentary about preteen anorexia in partnership with Ms. Magazine and NPR.  annheppermann@gmail.com

Kara Oehler is a public media innovator, radio documentary producer and interactive designer. Her work over the past decade has focused upon pushing the boundaries of narrative journalism both on the air and across multiple platforms, combining investigative storytelling with participatory media, building new systems and opportunities for education and artistic practice, and consulting others on imagining new futures of public media. Her radio stories, often created with longtime collaborator Ann Heppermann, have aired nationally and internationally on shows like NPR's Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, WNYC's RadioLab and Studio 360, Marketplace and the BBC.  karaoehler@gmail.com

Lu Olkowski is a contributing producer for Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen. Her work has also been heard on All Things Considered, Day to Day, Radio Lab, This American Life and Weekend America. She has been honored by the American Women in Radio & Television; the literary magazine The Missouri Review and the Third Coast International Audio Festival.  Prior to a career in public radio, Lu was a creative director at Nickelodeon. There, her responsibility was to lead a team of television and online producers to use emerging technologies to explore new ways of storytelling.  lolkowski@earthlink.net