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Bodies in Space: Sound Design for Expansive Worlds

This sound design workshop led by Ariana Martinez will teach conceptual and technical skills for sonic worldbuilding. Students will create a 4-7 minute sound-rich audio feature while completing short, in-class assignments to practice honing one’s attention to the world, gathering tape or selecting found sound, manipulating sonic qualities using a DAW’s built-in features and select plug-ins, and applying musical principles like rhythm and repetition as sound designers.

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About this class

  • 5 x 1.5 hr classes
  • Live instruction
  • 15 student cap
  • Classes meet Sundays 
    May 23 - June 20
  • 11:30am - 1pm PT/
    2:30pm - 4pm ET
  • Students walk away with a 4-7 minute sound-rich audio feature 
The world is telegraphing meaning: all of us are transmitters, and all of us are receivers. As we move through space, our senses are gathering all kinds of information—sights, smells, textures, atmospheric shifts, light, heat; and, of course, sound. This knowledge lives in our bodies, and we can use it to build new, vibrant worlds. As audio storytellers, we can create things that narratively resonate with listeners, but if we are also skilled sound-designers we can reach listeners at gut-level, in the places that resist or escape language, in ways that defy categorization or traditional story structures. 
Bodies in Space will teach both conceptual and technical skills for sonic worldbuilding that teems with life.

We’ll move through four conceptual frameworks: Resonance, Sensation, Space, and Musicality, each with their own narrative and technical applications.

Some important notes

As we learn together, we’ll explore how and why each of us might use sound differently to expose sound’s narrative, aesthetic, bodily, and political potentials. Throughout the course, participants will work to create a 4-7 minute sound-rich audio feature while completing short, in-class assignments to practice honing one’s attention to the world, gathering tape or selecting found sound, manipulating sonic qualities using a DAW’s built-in features and select plug-ins, and applying musical principles like rhythm and repetition as sound designers.

This class is best suited for students with a working knowledge of audio software and an interest in experimentation, but previous sound-design or composition knowledge is not required. While this class is designed as a space for play and creativity, we will also discuss how participants apply what they learn to more traditional storytelling structures.
Meet the instructor

Ariana Martinez

Ariana Martinez is a multimedia artist, radio documentarian, and sound designer. In their personal work, Ariana is interested in sensations of placeless-ness, disorientation, and the  inventive place-making that emerges from spatial and cultural fragmentation. Ariana has created radio feature stories for BBC 4’s Short Cuts, BBC 3’s Between the Ears, and KCRW’s The Organist. They were the sound designer and engineer for Brain on Nature, which was named one of the “Best Podcasts of 2019” by the Financial Times. Ariana has also contributed their skills to Transcripts (a podcast for the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project), Netflix’s Prism: Tales of Your City, and to various forthcoming longform-narrative projects. Ariana’s work has appeared at HearSay Festival, LUCIA Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, and The Barbican Cultural Centre’s Soundhouse. In their spare time, Ariana is a dedicated pen pal, graphic novel reader, and tiny collage maker.
Patrick Jones - Course author