Art and audio in the aisles

Grocery stores are dizzying places. So many choices. So much information. Flashy packaging. Conflicting priorities. I've stood staring and hopeless at the wall of soup cans too many times to count. Do I choose price or flavor or nutrition or ingredient or serving size or natural or local? If Donovan McNabb's mother eats this soup, shouldn't I?

So how nice would it be if someone replaced those voices in my head with an artful, musical take on the grocery store experience? Apparently, Rotozaza has done that. The UK-based artists have produced a half-hour audio tour of the supermarket -- ANY supermarket with more than 10 aisles.

Director Silvia Mecuriali is quoted in this Australian newspaper story:

“It plays around with the ideas of consumerism, reclaiming public space and using it in a different way,” Mercuriali said.

“It takes a mischievous swipe at the dominance of supermarket culture and consumerism.”
But you don’t have to buy anything and the people around you become extras in your own private “guerrilla-style” show.

The 30-minute tour guides the shopper through food sections, with the music changing to reflect the frozen food area, dairy, and fruit and vegetables.

I'll review the audio if I can get a copy -- right now it's only available to people who buy tickets for another theater performance in Melbourne.

But here's what's interesting. This is a placecast that isn't tied to a specific place, but rather to a KIND of place. The audience has to be somewhere to appreciate it, but not necessarily in the same place it was recorded. This works because grocery stores in much of the world now have more similarities than differences -- a fact worthy of reflection in itself.

This isn't historical interpretation, but rather societal deconstruction. And audio is still the perfect medium. "Wearing headphones and anonymous behind your trolley [shopping cart]," the project's Web site says, "you are guided around the aisles immersed in a private world, as the carefully constructed sound scape overlays a fictional world that blurs the real with the imaginary."

Using sound as the primary medium allows the audience to still participate in the physical world, while their thoughts about that place are being directed and informed by the audio program. There's no need to stare at a smartphone screen or tap away on a laptop keyboard.

What other places in our world are similar enough for this kind of placecast? Would it work anywhere beyond the homogeneous world of retail stores, fast food joints...maybe airports?

I'll explore this whole concept further, driven in part by this intriguing line from the Rotozaza Wondermart press release:

Rotozaza are the pioneers of Autoteatro, a new kind of performance where, by receiving and following instructions through headphones, audience members assume the roles of both actor and observer and thereby create a self-generating piece of theatre.

Of course that makes everyone else in the supermarket unwitting extras in your own private performance. This sounds so much better than staring at soup cans.

(photos by Ant Hampton via Rotozaza)

T.O.U.R. in the USA - A Mellencamp audio tour

Seymour, Indiana has been trying to cash in on its most famous former resident for a long time. Indeed, rocker John Mellencamp's heartland mystique is "one of the larger attractions to the area" according to Jackson County Visitor Center director Tina Stark.

Now, Cougarphiles and rock pilgrims can roam Seymour with a CD driving tour featuring Mellencamp memories, factoids and music.

Did you know the Mellencamps have lived in Jackson County for 150 years? Did you know John's mother threw out his first written songs? Do you know who ELSE is on the Seymour High School Wall of Fame? The tour knows...

From the Seymour Daily Tribune:

“It was originally just the brochure, but we were looking for a way to creatively put together a new experience for our visitors,” Stark said. She said the CD offers information the listener could not have gotten anywhere else and more personal information about Mellencamp.

Those lending their memories and stories about Mellencamp are his mother, brother, sister, former teacher, friends and former girlfriends.

The tour is narrated by Dan Osborne and features 16 of Mellencamp’s hit songs, including “Small Town,” “Human Wheels” and “R.O.C.K. In the USA.”

The audio tour has been in the works for five years. Stops include Mellencamp's boyhood home, his junior high and high school and several other local landmarks.

The CD is apparently only available at the visitors center, so I haven't been able to preview it. But I'm optimistic that it's more than tourist schlock. What gives me hope is that so much of Mellencamp's music is rooted in place and memory. He both celebrates and laments the qualities of small town Middle America.

So fans will recognize the significance of tour stops like Larrison’s Diner and the Rok-Sey Roller Rink -- even if they're not directly referenced in Mellencamp songs. Also, any tour creator who seeks out interviews with former girlfriends must understand the power of oral history in placecasting. And in this interview with NPR's Fresh Air, Mellencamp talks about how his early experience with racial issues still affect his lyrics today. If the tour can connect those dots between place, people and art, it should be worth the time (and the $14 price tag).

Now I wonder how many little pink houses are along the route.

(Here's a more detailed review of the tour from Jane Ammeson, of the Northwest Indiana Times)
(Main street Seymour photo from a very nice placeblog about U.S. Route 50 called Rte50.com)

It's ready! Northstar rail audio tour

My audio tour of Minnesota's new Northstar Commuter Rail Line is ready to go. The service has been running for five days and now riders can learn a bit about the towns and cities along the way. This tour talks about some of the buildings along the route (like Minnesota's first car factory and its first nuclear power plant) and about the history of the corridor, which Canadian fur traders were traveling in oxcarts 190 years ago.

Download the audio tour here. (.mp3 file, 9.8mb...right-click to download)
Here's an enhanced iTunes version with chapters if you have an iPod. (left-click to go to iTunes)

This audio file is meant to be used on the train, starting at Target Field in Minneapolis. It's one 20 minute file, broken into 5 chapters...one for each station. At the end of each chapter, it asks listeners to pause the audio until they leave the next station. There's about 20 minutes of information in all for the 51 minute trip.

I hope to create a second podcast for the inbound trip, but at the moment none of those morning trips happens during daylight hours.

If you listen to this podcast, I would LOVE to hear feedback. There's a lot more I want to do with this tape (add interviews and natural sound), and I want to know what you'd like to hear in the next version.

Podcasting Northstar

On Monday, I got to take a preview ride of the new Northstar Commuter Rail line from Minneapolis to Big Lake.  For train geeks, the opening of the new line (it opens to passengers on Monday, Nov. 16) marks a hopeful new era for rail travel in Minnesota. 

Practically, though, Northstar is about commuting to work...and not much more.  The timetables are set to get people into Minneapolis in time to get to work and to get them back home shortly after work is done.  Don't plan to stay downtown for a few drinks or a show because the last train out leaves at 6:10pm.

Nor should you expect to take a day trip from the city to beautiful Elk River.  Downtown ER is a really nice place, with a great view of a meandering Mississippi River...but the Northstar station isn't anywhere near downtown.  If you're daytripping, you'd better have someone ready to pick you up at the station.

All that said, Northstar will be great for thousands of commuters who want to avoid traffic on Hwy. 10 and relax a bit on the way to and from work.   My project is to create a podcast for people who ride the line to learn about the places they'll see along the way. 

The corridor from Minneapolis to St. Cloud along the east side of the river is full of history:  it was one of the main oxcart trails to St. Paul from the Red River Valley from the 1820s to 1870s.  Elk River housed the nation's first nuclear power plant.  Big Lake was a major source of ice for Twin Cities ice boxes.  Anoka is still home to Minnesota's first major mental health treatment center.

And of course there are the railroads.  The Northstar runs along track laid by the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad in the 1860s.  That track later became a key part of James J. Hill's Great Northern empire.  Passenger trains ran along the line for over 100 years (actually, one still does: Amtrak's Empire Builder makes one run per day in each direction on its route from Chicago to Seattle).  The rails are now owned by BNSF and that company's engineers will man the Northstar trains.

There are stories about American migration, agricultural and industrial development and our changing approach to living and working to be seen and heard on this train trip.  I'm trying to compile those stories into a podcast that's both place-specfic and easy to digest.  This isn't a lecture, it's a journey.

I hope the project will be done in the next couple weeks for any new riders of the line to enjoy.  Because I critique a lot of podcasts here, I'm going to try to take a lot of my own medicine in the writing and producing.  Wish me luck.

(Photos are mine.)

Scenic byways are made for audio touring

I'm working on a more complete list of audio tours along the Mississippi River. See Northeast Minneapolis, Wisconsin's Great River Road, and Quad Cities for some good examples. But I know there are more out there. I'm thinking of you, St. Louis...

Tonight, my search brought me to this driving tour page from the National Scenic Byways Program. It lays out a great, take-your-time style 2-day Mississippi River trip in Wisconsin. What's more, it almost precisely follows the route of the Great River Road Stories audio tour I wrote about in May -- still the best audio driving tour I've sampled so far, with interpretation of the cities, landscape and history all along the way. These sites are prefect companions for one another and it makes my wonder why more byways don't have this sort of grassroots audio tour.

The Scenic Byway Program is relatively new. It started in 1992. There are 125 designated routes all over the U.S. that meet a certain criteria. From the Byways.org:

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation recognizes certain roads as All-American Roads or National Scenic Byways based on one or more archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational and scenic qualities.

If you must travel by car, these routes are a great alternative to the Interstate highway system. The program stimulates local economies, highlights scenic or historical sites, and it helps the towns along the way work together -- like the Wisconsin Great River Road Stories group did. Oh, and the Byways are apparently becoming more bike friendly (though road biking isn't encouraged on the Wisconsin road yet).

Just last week, the Department of Transportation announced 41 million dollars of new spending on the Byways, including a lot of money focused on interpretation. Signs and visitors centers are great, but I think all 125 of these routes should have audio tours about the sights and cities along the way. After all, you're sure not going to watch YouTube videos in the car.

(photos from byways.org)

Canoeing the Mississippi on the radio

I don't spend much time "on air" in my job. I'm more comfortable calling the shots on the other side of the glass from the microphones. But the latest place-based project at Minnesota Public Radio was my idea and I took the opportunity to voice one of the stories myself.

During the week the Ken Burns documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" aired on PBS, I wanted to air stories about the National Park Service sites in Minnesota. Five days, five parks -- how perfect.

The full series is here. Three of our reporters in greater Minnesota were nice enough to be part of the project and they made three surprising stories about places I think most of our neighbors don't even realize exist in our state: Voyageurs National Park (which still has a tense relationship with its neighbors), Pipestone National Monument (which still offers a working -- and sacred -- rock quarry) and Grand Portage National Monument (which is a grand experiment in dual management -- half federal government, half Native American tribe).

Last Friday, on the last day of the series, I went into the broadcast booth to talk about my experience in Minnesota's most unusual National Park site, the Mississippi National River and Recreation area (which has virtually no land of its own, but enviable access to millions of visitors). Here's the audio:

I know this is broadcasting rather than placecasting, but there is a close relationship and the same qualities of presentation, information and surprise are key to both. But with broadcasting, it's more important to paint pictures for the audience and include sound to put them in the location. (With placecasting, of course, they're already there!) In this case, the sound of kids having a blast in the canoes is priceless.

Oh yeah...the fifth park is the St. Croix National Scenic River. We share that one with Wisconsin (kinda like Brett Favre, eh?). We didn't send a reporter there, but we had a good phone conversation with one of the rangers there.

(image from MPRNewsQ.org)

Central Park cell phone tour

The folks at Walking New York tweeted about cell phone tours in Central Park last week, and since they posted a handy photo, I decided to call the number give it a try.

The random tour stops I sampled are well done. They feature some big New York personalities (such as restauranteur Danny Meyer, actor Mandy Patinkin and TV star Alec Baldwin) reading short bits of history related to the stop you're at.

The information at The Dairy covers the history of the building there, some info about poor public health in the early 1900s, and isn't afraid to talk about the corrupt Boss Tweed administration that turned the building into a popular watering hole.

The Central Park Conservancy created the tour and offers a good printable map of the tour stops.

These are really just actors reading scripts, but the scripts are pretty well written and the actors are top-notch. Some personalize their scripts (Mandy Patinkin spent a lot of time on the carousel as a kid. Who knew?) The information is mostly historical, but it also offers advice about how to enjoy the park and what to find inside the buildings you see. The scripts avoid hyperbole and tourist-propaganda. Other than an introductory music stinger, these stops don't use background music or sound effects and I don't miss either one.

The tour doesn't take advantage of location as well as it could. Even though the creators know right where you are, most stops don't direct your eyes to particular details of the landscape around you. But stop #9, for example, does point out some details (flowers nearby) that you might otherwise overlook.

The length of each stop seems just right and the cell phone interface is very easy to work with. This is a really nice addition to Central Park that both visitors and residents will find interesting.

The New York Times CityRoom Blog gives its take here.

(photo from brettsea on yfrog)