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A collaboration with the Prelinger Library - a very special collection of books, documents and other cultural bits — from the concrete & tangible to the abstract & etherized.
The Third Coast Festival's 2008 audio challenge invites producers, artists, writers and radio fans of all stripes (newbies to veterans) to submit finished audio works (aka Radio Ephemera) inspired by two books from the Prelinger Library, including the voice of a stranger, and lasting 2:30 – 3:00 minutes.
Subsmission incentives!
Four RE producers will be chosen to attend the Third Coast Festival Conference happening October 9th-11th in Evanston, IL (near Chicago) where you'll present your submission as an official
2008 TCF ShortDoc. Your registration, flight and hotel will all be covered. These four submissions will also be announced and featured prominently on this website in early November.
We're no longer accepting submissions for Radio Ephemera but thanks to everyone who contributed to the mighty collection of 72 (!!) submissions. We're enormously proud of the amazing work you've produced!
Read more about RE guidelines.
Hear more about RE and how it originated, including vivid descriptions of the books from the PL co-founders.
Pictured below are the books you can choose from. Pick two and connect them somehow, in your story.
Click on each cover to see a gloriously enlarged photo. Click on the link underneath each cover to browse through each book for further inspiration. Note: You are NOT obligated to actually read the books from front to back!
"Trees as Good Citizens" "Control of Body and Mind" "The Big Strike"
Charles Lathrop Park, 1922 Frances Gulick Jewett, 1908 Mike Quin, 1949
browse through this book browse through this book browse through this book
"Trailer Ahoy! " "The Stork Didn't Bring You!"
Charles Edgar Nash, 1937 [The Facts of Life for Teenagers]
browse through this book Lois Pemberton, 1948
browse through this book
Submission guidelines
How to submit your finished audio story
More about the Prelinger Library
Radio Ephemera myspace page.
How and why to submit your submission to Vocalo.org
Read about a Radio Ephemera-inspired elementary school project.
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Guidelines:
Radio Ephemerizing is easy as pie!
> Each Radio Ephemera (RE) submission must clearly reference two of the five selections displayed above. We leave it to you to find a connection that’s literal, metaphorical, or somewhere in between. You'll get a general sense of each book through the cover and title, and can also browse through each one (digitally) for text, details and further ideas for your production. Note: You are NOT obligated to actually read the books from front to back!
> Each submission must fall between 2:30 and 3:00 minutes in length.
> "Include the voice of a stranger" means just that. This can be a random street interview or an excerpt from film or tv, or any other manifestation of someone else's voice. Songs/music technically count, but seem the far too easy/obvious route, to us. Instead, we recommend that you actively seek out conversations, exclamations, declarations, etc.
> RE submissions may be documentary, fictional, or a hybrid of both.
> RE submissions will be accepted April 1 – midnight, August 3rd, 2008.
> Producers are limited to three RE submissions.
And an important one:
> Submissions that include the use of sound (beyond voices) are especially welcome. After all, it IS a radio project. Let the sounds help.
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How to submit to Radio Ephemera:
Email an mp3 of your audio submission to thirdcoastfestival@gmail.com.
Or mail it on CD to:
Radio Ephemera
Third Coast Festival
Chicago Public Radio
848 E. Grand Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
Please include the following information:
- Producer name
- Mailing address and phone number (won't be publicized)
- Affiliated website (will be publicized)
- Title of submission
- One-sentence summary of your submission
- List the two books from the Prelinger Library relevant to submission
- Note the stranger whose voice you've included
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How and why to submit your RE submission to Vocalo.org
 In addition to our possibly airing your RE submission on Re:sound, here's a great opportunity to get your work heard in another way - on Vocalo.org, a radio station, social networking site and playground for audiomakers that serves Chicago and Northest Indiana. Just create a profile and upload your Radio Ephemera, and you'll join a community of storytellers and listeners from all over. Plus you can upload any other audio pieces you've produced, get feedback on your work, offer your own two cents about what you hear, and get your stories onto the airwaves across Chicagoland.
Curious? Head over to Vocalo.org to learn more. Contact info@vocalo.org or check out their FAQ page if you have any problems getting started, and don't forget to tag your submission "Radio Ephemera."
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About our collaborator - the Prelinger Library
Brought to life in 2004 by "radical traditionalists" Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger, the Prelinger Library (San Francisco, CA) is an appropriation- friendly, browsable collection of approximately 40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera, government documents and other cultural bits. Unlike at most libraries, visitors to the Prelinger Library are encouraged to browse to their hearts’ content and make copies of any materials they choose. Appropriation is encouraged and re-use of all harvested content is perfectly acceptable.
Material in the Prelinger Library collection ranges from thousands of maps, to radical labor histories, to social hygeine periodicals, to candy journals. It’s a veritable goldmine of information just waiting to be researched. If you're in the Bay area, check first for hours of operation before dropping by.
Along the same lines, here's more:
> The Internet Archive is is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining an on-line library and archive of Web and multimedia resources, including moving images, texts, audio and educational resources.
> Much of the Prelinger Library has been scanned and exists online as part of the Internet Archive.
> The Prelinger Archives - a collection of 4000+ films and videos of cultural and historical significance - are also available for your browsing, auditioning and downloading pleasure. You'll find everything from corporate training movies from the 50s to vintage cartoons to old-school sex ed filmstrips. You'll find things you didn't even know you were looking for. |
Radio Ephemera in the classroom
 Chicago-area elementary school teacher David Green, partly inspired by Radio Ephemera, introduced a special project to his class at North Shore Country Day School. Here's how David explains it:
The board has over 500 post-its on it (not fun to put up, but worth the end result). I invited my school commmunity, students, faculty, parents to write on the post-its. This is the explanation I sent out to them, which is also posted on the bulletin board"
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 are often kept for some reason. Examples include tickets, postcards, brochures, lists, posters, playbills, etc."
For our board, we are expanding this notion to include objects and possessions too. For example, a toy you haven't played with for years, an old t-shirt which doesn't fit you anymore, a purple and silver skinny tie you wore a lot in the mid '80s.
What possession, object, thing, (written or otherwise) 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?
Write it down on a post-it on our board. Fill out more than one post-it if you wish. Sign your name or remain anonymous.
  
hours of operation
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