Story emerges from sound. Around the fire, stories were heard - not read. A series of noises (footsteps, laughing, gunshot) tells its own story and music gives us narrative through beats, melodies, and sometimes, pitched language. Once, radio was the popular storytelling method, and now, with the advent of podcasts, we are experiencing a renaissance of narrative audio, and new form for writers to explore. This lab will focus on experiments in sonic and spoken communication. We will discuss and utilize, through creative assignments, the language of sound-based media, including podcasts, film, sound art, music, radio dramas, audiobooks, and field recordings. Some questions we'll address include: What can sound do that text alone cannot? Is music truly an international language? Why don't we write like we speak? Each lab will be dedicated in part to live experimentation; students will come to class with materials to create a new sound-based forms, using simple computer applications and basic recording techniques. Students will conduct these weekly experiments overseen by the instructor, after which the results will be presented, critiqued, and discussed.

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