The 2008 TCF Conference sessions:

General Sessions:

     Presenting the 2008 ShortDocs: Radio Ephemera / FNR presents Lenin's Ears
     These are a Few of the Kitchen Sisters' Favorite Things


Breakout Sessions:
     
     Approaching Approaches
     Caging the Chaos: How to Produce Radio Stories That Aren't Exactly Stories
     College: A Hotbed of Emerging Producers
     The Inner Sound of the Outer World
     Just Listen to Yourself
     Like Blackpool Went Through Rock: The Story of the Radio Ballads
     Listening Critically
     Mastering the Grill: Why Some Interviews Go Up in Smoke
     Neo-Futurism: The Joys (and Rewards) of Forced Creativity
     Noah's "The Classics"
     Perfect Pitch, brought to you by AIR

Conference Miscellany:

     Gallery of More
     Radio Haven
     Audio Doctor Sessions
     Group [Radio] Therapy
     Tech Table

(Click on images below to enlarge! Photos by Steven Gross of Real Life Weddings)

Presenting the 2008 TCF ShortDocs: Radio Ephemera


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For the 2008 TCF public audio challenge, we joined forces with the Prelinger Library (SF), a one-of-a-kind collection of books, periodicals and more - from the concrete and tangible to the abstract and etherized. Any and everyone was invited to proudce short audio stories inspired by two books from the Library, and including the voice of a stranger. Four submissions were chosen as the 2008 TCF ShortDocs and were presented by their producers, along with a few other noteworthy submissions. Moderated by Julie Shapiro, with John Biewen, Sarah Boothroyd, David P. Earle and Meghan Vigeant.

Followed by a special presentation: Lenin's Ears, by FNR

After the RE presentation, Andrey Allakhverdov, from the far-flung FNR (Foundation for Independent Radio Broadcasting), talked about what FNR is up to over in Moscow, and introduce the timezone-bending, modern day audio legend: 'Lenin's Ears.'


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"I don't have the words to express the look on Ilyich's face when he first heard the broadcast. He just glowed with a quiet joy. Then his eyes slightly narrowed and he looked far off into the distance. Returning the headphones to me, Vladimir Ilyich thoughtfully pronounced: 'How much radio offers the people…. It is -- the miracle of our century!'"  (1920)

 …And so it was that the Bolshevik Vladimir Ilyich Lenin discovered his new hobby. Only some passions have a way of becoming obsessions. He's been listening all this time…and October 2008 marks his final transmission.

These are a Few of the Kitchen Sisters' Favorite Things


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Ever wonder what inspires, obsesses and ignites The Kitchen Sisters? Find out during this hour + of audio (and other less-evolved art forms) from their accidental archive and the stirring work of others. Among other surprises you'll hear shards of sound, music, film clips, imagery and many, many stories.

First Annual (?) TCF Singalong


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Inspired by this article by musician (and sonic hero to many) Brian Eno, the Kitchen Sisters closed out the Conference by leading the room in a rousing hootenanny. A full band materialized (seemingly) out of thin air, and 350 radio producers enthusiastically sang "16 Tons" and "I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends." The start of a new TCF Conference tradition? We certainly hope so. (Click on the image to witness the full glory of the moment.)

Approaching Approaches


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Alessandro Bosetti talks of the tremors felt while approaching somebody else's life with a microphone in-hand, when fears of exploitation combine with implacable curiosity and the possibility that neither you nor your interviewee will understand each other's intentions.

Caging the Chaos: How to Produce Radio Stories That Aren't Exactly Stories


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Common sense dictates that a good radio story should start with a firm sense of what the story is. But what if you only have the vaguest sense of the story - whether it's a scenario, or an idea, or even a joke you'd like to tell? Working this way is uneconomical in terms of time and money, and more to the point, a murky beginning may go nowhere. But according to Jonathan Goldstein, exploring a story in this manner can also be exciting, and lead to unexpected places and unforgettable results.

College: A Hotbed of Emerging Producers

It's true! All around the country college students are asking for and receiving new courses that teach audio production. They're intent on finishing college with multi-media skills, and, lucky for us, they want to help shape the future of documentary audio. Come hear what this year's TCF Minority Student Scholars have to say about our medium, and get a taste of the work they're busy producing. Moderated by Beverly Mire.




audio coming soon!

audio coming soon!






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The Inner Sound of the Outer World


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Microphones cannot capture situations as they are percieved. A car crash on tape lacks everything that the experience of an accident amounts to: the surprise, the holding of breath, the shock, the sadness. Through original recordings and outtakes from finished pieces, Jens Jarisch demonstrates how important everything else besides the spoken word in a documentary can be.

Right-click to download a PDF of the transcript to the first excerpt featured in this session,from Lifestyle: Why the Vietnamese Don't Wear Adidas Shoes.

Right-click to download a PDF of the transcrtip to the second excerpt in this session, from The Secret Sums of Money: An Investigation into Germany's National Debt.

Presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Chicago.

Just Listen to Yourself


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A bad editor is a curse. Having a good editor is a blessing but can often be a luxury. Deborah George explains how to work effectively with the editor you’ve been dealt and how to be your own editor if you don’t have one. It’s all in the listening.

Like Blackpool Went Through Rock: The Story of the Radio Ballads


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Fifty years ago folksingers Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger collaborated with BBC Radio producer Charles Parker to create an amazing body of work - the Radio Ballads. These eight hour-long tapestries of voices, field recordings and musical narrative pioneered a new approach to radio storytelling. Sara Parker, daughter of Charles Parker, shared the story of the Radio Ballads, including excerpts from the programs and new material uncovered from the Charles Parker Archive in Birmingham, UK.

Listening Critically


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Art forms such as film, literature and even TV, generate rich bodies of critcal writing that pushes the boundaries of what creators do and why, and gives audiences new ways to appreciate the work. In radio, work gets discussed in edits and workshops. But how often do producers peer into the heart of the ideas, and often unspoken assumptions, informing their work? With audio and moving-image clips from the last hundred years, Ben Shapiro and James Wehmeyer pick up the gauntlet to see how theories and discussions from other arts can be brought to the radio medium.

Mastering the Grill: Why Some Interviews Go Up in Smoke


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Some respond to praise,  others to badgering, some the frontal assault, others when you sneak up from behind. Brooke Gladstone offers a few interrogation tips (and some audio examples) on how to get your guests to crack, and make them like it. And why sometimes it all goes unspeakably wrong.

Neo-Futurism: The Joys (and Rewards) of Forced Creativity


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Greg Allen, the creator of "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind" - the show which has spawned nearly 10,000 short plays - conducts a workshop on generating new material, exploring new forms, and beating writer's block. Allen shares the secrets behind his company's endless creative energy by leading exercises in instant story writing and conceptual brainstorming.

Noah's "The Classics"


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From CF and SD memory cards back to 24-track with stops for MD, DAT and cassette, Noah Adams rambles through 30 years of radio production, playing the stories that inspired his own work and that of countless others. Often it’s one special audio moment that will make a person decide on radio as a career. Adams will share a few examples of these catalysts - some illustrious, some little-known.

Perfect Pitch (brought to you by AIR)

Perfect your pitching skills and present your ideas to program producers and editors - or just listen in - as AIR (Association for Independents in Radio) once again pulls back the curtain to let us in on how stories make it to the airwaves. As in the past, tried and true programs from NPR, APM and PRI will take pitches from producers. But this year, new ground-breaking projects from public radio and beyond will also be on stage for the fun. Moderated by AIR member Neenah Ellis, with different panelists each day.





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[L-R: Davia Nelson, Nikki Silva (Kitchen Sisters), Bob Boilen (NPR Music), and Jane Feltes (This American Life)




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[L-R: Peter Clowney (Weekend America), Celeste Wesson (Marketplace), David Krasnow (Studio 360) and Leda Hartman (World Vision Report)]

Gallery of More

The first ever TCF Gallery of More presented a variety of installations - mostly audio - that offered individual and group interactive experiences.









>Journey to the Inner Outsider Ear, by Lisa C. Abbatomarco
Packlist: 50 field recordings, ambient and experiential sounds, leftover film canisters, journal, toothbrush, extra socks, guide to Outsider art, passport... Travel is a cacophonous happening for the senses and memory. Creatively exploring the territory of re-telling experiences, this installation takes the didactic and turns it on its ear. Internalizing the world of the outsider through microcosmic recollection all neatly packed in a suitcase of sound.

> Mask/Mirror, by Alessandro Bosetti
A few months ago I wrote a note to myself : "Try to create a mask that doesn’t have anything to do with anything," and kept wondering what that could mean until i started to imagine Mask/Mirror.

Mask/Mirror a sampler that processes recordings of spoken language in real time. The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing, processing samples and formulating utterances. Engaging with M/M is like wearing a mask that has nothing to do with anything, or watching yourself in a mirror as you say things you've always wanted to say... but didn't know until now.

> Ephemera Board 2, by David Green
What is ephemera? Those bits of throwaway paper and minor documents of every day life, created for a specific, limited purpose, and generally designed to be discarded after use. But ephemera is often kept for some reason.

What possessions, (written or otherwise- for this installation personal items and objects count too) are you still hanging on to...which you really should have gotten rid of by now, but just can't bear to part with for some reason? Grab a pen, choose a post-it note and leave some ephemera about your ephemera.

Ephemera Board 2 consists of more than 500 post-it notes, ephemera in waiting. This project was inspired in equal parts by TCF’s Radio Ephemera audio challenge and the work of the Illegal Art Collective of New York. Ephemera Board I is currently being filled up with the ephemera of students, faculty and parents at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, IL where David teaches.

UPDATE!!
Click here to dowload and read a list of ephemera left by Conferene attendees, like:
- A napkin used by my 10th grade history teacher, Mr. Patterson...sigh.
- My impacted wisdom teeth!
- A menu from the Belden Corned Beef Center
- A Snoopy commemorative coin from the 1969 moon walk
And our favorite, of course:
- I keep all my Third Coast name tags...all 8 of them.

>Three Places in New England, by Dean Olsher
A century ago, composer Charles Ives set out to capture a sense of place – three places, actually, in New England – using the means at his disposal: the symphony orchestra. Since then, we have invented other ways to recreate the experience of being in a given locale, through recorded sounds and images. Dean Olsher uses the tools available to him to create a documentary parallel to Ives's Three Places in England. We may believe that electronic media is the next best thing to being there. But how much should we trust our senses?

> Panorama Ephemera, by Rick Prelinger
"Panorama Ephemera" (2004, 89:35 min, color and black and white) focuses on familiar and mythical American images(1626-1978.) Its cast includes children, animals, farmers, industrial workers, superheroes, pioneers heading west, crash-test dummies, and many others. At first resembling a compilation, "Panorama Ephemera" soon reveals itself as a journey through American landscape and history, and the story begins to emerge between the sequences.

> The World Is Your Instrument: Play It Now, by Glenn Weyant
This self-guided, immersive environment utilizes sound, words and images to chronicle The Anta Project, a two year (and counting) transformation of the southern United States border walls and ephemera from symbols of fear, insecurity and invasion into an electro-acoustic instrument capable of promoting unity.

Hear Glenn explain The Anta Project, and a sample from the project in an NPR SoundClip, which aired on NPR's All Things Considered in June, 2006.

Radio Haven

Learn more about three ambitious radio organizations tackling international issues and looking for independent producers to work with. Browse the tables set up by FNR (from Russia), Outer Voices and the Pulitzer Center.

Since 1999, the Foundation for Independent Radio Broadcasting (FNR) has worked for the development of quality radio broadcasting across Russia through production of information programming and capacity-building of regional radio stations. The full range of FNR's activities – which include journalist trainings, internship residencies, online/new media projects, a nationwide radio festival, and original audio productions – seeks to bring Russian radio broadcasting in line with the highest international standards of broadcasting.

Lend them your ears via FNR's 'Podstantsiya' podcast.


Outer Voices’ mission is to explore, foster and promote women's unique contributions in leading non-violent social change by use of radio and other forms of media in order to inspire others to action. Our core work is a six-part radio documentary series focused on women leaders in the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia. Outer Voices is the only U.S. radio documentary team solely focused on international issues, and so we are constantly looking for ways to expand the scope of international information available to American ears.

The Pulitzer Center's mission is to promote in-depth coverage of international affairs, focusing on topics that have been under-reported, mis-reported – or not reported at all. The Center supports around 30 reporting projects per year that focus on systemic level crises, pushing all associated publications and broadcasts across multiple media platforms to ensure the widest possible audience is reached. Visit the Pulitzer Center online for more information.

WFMU's Free Music Archive

Ever wish there was one dependable place online to find GOOD music that’s available for your production needs without any rights/permissions complications? Lucky for you, the masterminds at WFMU in Jersey City have been hard at work creating just such a thing. The Free Music Archive, WFMU’s latest web initiative, is a free, specially-curated online library of music, audio and radio which is cleared for non-commercial use by its creators. Stick around after the opening reception to hear FMU's General Manager Ken Freedman lay it all out, and find out how to get involved yourself.