I found another little audio driving tour while researching my next vacation destination. Great Smoky Mountain Association has a series of podcasts about Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including a two-part driving tour along the main park road from Gatlinburg to Cherokee. It's actually four parts, but I'm assuming the south-to-north podcasts are the same at the north-to-south, repackaged. I'll take a listen while I'm there and find out for certain.
View Placecasting: Audio tours I've found in a larger map
I'm going to start collecting tours like these on a Google Map as I find them and get time to plot them. The very basic beginning of this undertaking is here. Eventually, I'd like to make a one-stop map where people could look for relevant audio content. As I and others have discovered, there's no great system for geotagging audio content. This means the explosion of mobile, location-aware devices can't really take advantage of the great place-based sound work people are creating around the globe.
By the way, if you know of other good place-based audio, please post them in the comments or use the link on the right to add an item of your own to the list I'm finding.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Update: Wisconsin driving tour
I had a chance to listen to the Great River Road Stories audio driving tour last weekend on my way home from Illinois, and I was really impressed. As I wrote last month, the production quality is so-so, but the information was really interesting and the oral histories were compelling.
In one case, I listened to a tug boat captain explain how he navigates his barges into the river locks. It's trickier than I ever imagined and as I listened to him, I drove passed a lock & dam and could see just how narrow an opening he has to deal with. And a few minutes later, I passed a barge heading down the river. It was like a personalized story just for me...a driver alone in the car.
This experience further proved to me that being on location matters. Stories that aren't worth my attention elsewhere can take on new layers of meaning when told in a particular place. I'll always associate that story with the images of my drive...but the podcast producers just had to give me the audio and tell me where to press play.
In one case, I listened to a tug boat captain explain how he navigates his barges into the river locks. It's trickier than I ever imagined and as I listened to him, I drove passed a lock & dam and could see just how narrow an opening he has to deal with. And a few minutes later, I passed a barge heading down the river. It was like a personalized story just for me...a driver alone in the car.
This experience further proved to me that being on location matters. Stories that aren't worth my attention elsewhere can take on new layers of meaning when told in a particular place. I'll always associate that story with the images of my drive...but the podcast producers just had to give me the audio and tell me where to press play.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
