The changing spaces of reading and writing

While selecting the golden records songs, the first thought that came to my mind was: Who am I to decide which songs need to be included and which ones to be excluded. I tried to include ‘ a little bit of everything’. While working on this task, I felt as those who work on digitizing the analog material. What are the guidelines and criteria to determine what is in and out? 

More does not mean that is better. However, when it comes to telling other lives and civilizations about planet earth, is challenging to decide what represents us. I tried to include tracks from different cultures but at the same time I wanted them to represent different feelings. While listening to the tracks, I felt that some represented specific emotions that are very unique of humans. 

If what was written on the record could have also been considered as a “track”, it would have one of the ten that I chose. What if they cannot hear nor feel the sound waves produced by the pieces. If they are able to see, then they could at least try to decipher what was written on the record.  

Next to each record, I have added a short explanation for choosing it. 

Track #2: Greetings in 55 Languages. This includes a variety of languages, portraying the different cultures that planet earth has. 

Track #3: United Nations Greetings/Whale Songs. The reason for choosing this track was due to the whales rather than the greetings. The whales’ song is another for of life other than humans that are delivering a message via their song.

Track #4: The Sound of Earth. This track included the evolution of Earth; volcanoes, thunder and lava, portraying the planetary development. Additionally it includes the planets’ frequency. I interpret it as a representation of our entire solar system. 

Track #8: Alima Song. It includes the sounds that one could hear in the rainforest. It is the representation of our planet’s vegetation, which has not been destroyed by man so far. Should extraterrestrials find earth one day, maybe they still have a chance to listen and visit this beautiful place. 

Track #10: El Cascabel. This is a very joyful song. Emotions or feelings are part of what makes us humans, it is a characteristic that makes us unique. This song might allow extraterrestrial life understand how we humans are. 

Track #13: Sokaku-Reibo (Depicting the Cranes in Their Nest). This was a very unique piece since it was only done by the flute, there were no additional instrument. The song is about the cycle of life cranes who are raised by their parents cranes and when grown leave the nest and, the parent cranes who grow old and die. This is the usual circle of life for humans too. 

Track #14: Melancholy Blues. What can I say? Jazz is Jazz. How can one not like it? This was my first time listening to this track. I felt as if the song itself was narrating a story. This song is from a very specific genre. I believe that it would catch extraterrestrial listeners attention. 

Track #16: The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), Part II—The Sacrifice: VI. Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One). I link this piece with the word tension and pressure. This is another of those tracks that can show the different emotions that humans go through. 

Track #18: Symphony No.5 in C Minor. This is a Classic! This piece is so powerful. When it comes to Classical music, this is one of the most famous ones. It is radiant and energetic. It also provides a sense of history on how music evolved. Another reason for choosing this piece is because I would like to portray the different string instruments that humans use to produce music. 

Track #24: Liu Shui. This is a very relaxing piece. I chose this one to show a contrast  the Asian music with the Western music. Also, it would be therapeutic for an extraterrestrial life who has been under amount of stress.  

This task is based on the TASK 1: What’s in your bag? If you have not viewed my first TASK, don’t do it until you have listened to my audio file. This audio file is a collection of the sounds that my items make when I use them during my daily routine. Once you have finished listening to the audio, I invite you to guess the items that I carry in my daily bag. You can check if you got them right by reviewing TASK 1.

P.S: I actually do talk to my devices sometimes when I am by myself.

This task was somehow challenging because I am visual person. However, thinking how our communication spaces have changed throughout the year: from writing letters to emails, from emails to texting, from texting to voice messages, what’s next? We can send pictures and audios. We will be able to send smells, tastes also via our devices one day? Just a thought.

It was fun but challenging. At a first glance writing a plot with Emojis sounded easy, but it was not. When telling a story or a plot, one would like to convey the entire message or idea so the reader can understand. However, while writing the plot, I realized that only though Emojis was not enough. There is a lot that needs to come from the reader. Questions that I asked myself while “Emojing”: will they understand? What if the Emoji that I used might not correctly represent what I want to convey?

People say ”A picture is worth a thousand words”, right now I am not sure.

Here it goes, I would like to know what you’ve understood.

I tried to embed my twine Story into the blog, but I was not able to figure it out. I comfort myself saying that I am not a coder. It is the story about my usual days. (clicking on this link will take you directly to the game)

If you wish to open it up in another window, you can copy and paste this link: https://chaoslamasloca.wixsite.com/etec540

My journal entry

Three types of correction pens I use

I enjoy writing by hand. I keep an old fashion daily planner and a journal too. Growing up and going to school everything was with pen and paper, these days some schools are going almost all digital. When I was in college, I would also send letter to my grandma since she did not use a computer. I do not write as much as before. Most of my work and communication with others are via text and digital documents. 

While working on this task, I realized that I was writing pretty slow. I used to be quicker when I was taking down notes in class. It was not difficult, it just took me some time to get my hand used to writing again. It was like riding a bike. 

I made some mistakes while writing this task. I just crossed it out. I was not the most aesthetic method, but it was the fastest one. I used loose leaf paper from my binder. I did not have my correction pens with me either, so the best option was to cross out. Should I have written on my real journal, I would definitely have used a correction pen to edit my mistakes. Sometimes I even draw something in order to cover my mistakes. 

Mechanical writing is definitely faster and practical. If we need to add sentences or move a paragraph it would be a click a way. Writing by hand would mean starting all over again. 

Mechanical or by hand? It depends who the reader is. If I need to hand in a paper or a presentation, I would go for mechanical writing because is fast, clean and practical. However, I still send hand written letters or greeting cards to friends during special occasions. I believe it adds a personal touch. I try to hand write every opportunity I have so as to keep up this tradition that seems to be fading away.   

One of the reasons that I keep on hand writing is because my Chinese writing is not as good as before. Unlike English, we do not combine vowels and consonants to form a word. One needs to remember how to write each Chinese character. The more I type in Chinese the more lazy I become in remembering the next character I need to type. The reason is because the app or computer  starts “suggesting” the characters that should follow by character usage frequency so. I believe constant hand writing in Chinese might trigger my memory on the characters that I have learnt but have not used for a while. 

Another reason is that I love stationery. In order to buy more pens, I need to use them so I need to write more. I have added an additional picture of what I would have used to correct my mistakes. The lollypop one is actually a correction tape, the second one is a crayon/gel where you would paint over the mistake, the last one is a liquid paint. I wonder if the stationery market has become smaller since a lot of us are going digital now. What about books? Most of the books can be acquired digitally, has the books market been drastically affected by the change of mediums (print and digital)?

Below is the transcription of my story.
About me_otter.ai

I hope I did not bore you with my story. I have not told a story for such a long time. I spent a lot of time thinking of which story I should be telling. I decided to tell a story about myself. There was not an actual script, I ‘told’ it as it came to me (in my head). I found my self with a lot of “hmmmm” and “emm” while telling my own life story. Maybe I am not the best storyteller. 

The app that I chose to use is called OTTER. This was my first time using a transcribing app. Even if I had a script to read from it, I am not sure how much better it would be. It would have been more articulate and faster as I read through the script. While recording the story I was afraid that if I spoke too fast, the app might not correctly transcribe what I was saying. 

While telling the story, every pause (long or short) that was made it was interpreted as a different speaker portraying it as a dialogue. However, while exploring the app there was an additional feature “show as monologue”. Maybe I should have set it up with that function in order to avoid this issue. 

One of the common mistakes was that “to” was being transcribed into “two”. Words with similar sounds were misinterpreted.  Some words were omitted while others were split into two words. For example the word Argentina was transcribed as “engine Tina”, which does not make sense. Those mistakes were “understandable”, but the biggest mistake was “catch up in regards to graphic design” that was transcribed to “capture and record graphic design”. Overall I believe that the transcription is almost the same as how it was told. Even if someone read the transcription they would understand 90% of it, and maybe decipher the “mistakes” by common sense. 

I believe that oral storytelling adds a unique touch while transmitting the information. Through the sounds, intonation and even the storyteller’s voice, the audience can perceive the spirit and mood of the story. Although the written storytelling can try to mimic that though additional descriptions, it is not the same. As stated by Ong (2002), the oral tradition can not be easily and accurately be recreated. Even if recreated, it would not be the same as the ‘original’ version. It would be ‘lost in transcription’. 

This concept of information transmission makes me reflect on how communication has changed over the years. Human civilization started with oral transmission, then it became written (hand carved or hand written) transmission, then printed, now digital. The tools and mediums are different, but does it convey the same meaning? Back in the days we would send out hand written greeting cards or even letters, now these days is just a click away. Or instead of calling someone, we would just send them a text. The message is almost the same, but the expression is not present. I feel that technology has facilitated our way of communication, but through this process we have lost bits of the original message.

This task was about oral to text. While doing completing the task I have thought of text to voice. There are several apps in the market that can turn the text into audio files, the app can even ‘read it to you’. Would there be an era that man will go back to “oral tradition”? Humans are lazy, as long as the technology can help us completing the task, why not? Would there be a time where we are even too lazy to read text and have the app play it for us to listen? Gnanadesikan (2011) mentioned the example of courtroom stenography, stating that reading was not the same as read listening to a recording because intonation and emotional content is lost. However, what about reading apps, listening to computer assisted reading, would that mean that there is an additional loss of information? Computer assisted reading is not the same as traditional oral transmission. The more we advance in communication technology, the more eroded the “original message” becomes. 

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons.

Ong, Walter, J. Taylor & Francis eBooks – CRKN, & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York; London: Routledge.