Episode Summary This month, the SpokenWeb Podcast is happy to showcase an episode from our sister podcast, the SoundBox Signals Podcast from SpokenWeb at UBC Okanagan. SoundBox Signals is hosted and co-produced by Karis Shearer. In this episode, from Season 2, Episode 1 of the SoundBox Signals Podcast, University of Exeter undergraduates Sofie Drew and Emily Chircop carry out a close listening of a 1980 recording of Sharon Thesen reading from her first book Artemis Hates Romance at George and Angela Bowerings' house. Drew and Chircop's conversation focuses on the intimacy, sociality, and ambig ..read more

During the Covid pandemic, before she had ever set foot in a classroom dedicated to learning about libraries, Maia Trotter discovered a YouTube video titled "Library Ambiance." This video didn't contain the typically fabricated sounds of a library that someone had layered over each other like book pages turning and a fireplace crackling in the background, but a live recording of the sounds of a public library out there in the world. These sounds are what helped her to get through the isolation she felt during those long months at home.  Having now been surrounded by ideas about libraries ..read more

SUMMARY From medieval itineraries to modern livestreams, Christian pilgrimage is often, if not always experienced through an imaginative transposal from a physical reality to a spiritual truth. In this episode, hosts Lindsay Pereira and Ella Jando-Saul explore the concept of virtual pilgrimage through conversations with two guests: Michael Van Dussen, a professor in the Department of English at McGill University in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, teaches us about the medieval experience of pilgrimage in the British Isles while Simon Coleman, a professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the ..read more

SUMMARY In this first episode of Season 6, producer Andrew Whiteman invites listeners to step into an arena of collaboration between poetry and sound. We all know it when we hear it, and we have mixed feelings about it. Why does the archaic meeting place of music and poem hit such a nerve? Is this art form literature or is it music? Surely, it’s not song, is it? And if poems already carry their prosodic intentions within themselves – why bother supplementing them with extraneous audio?" These questions are answered by Siren Recordings, a new digital-DIY sonic poetry label run by Kelly Baron an ..read more

Hold onto your hats, because the SpokenWeb Podcast is back! This season, we'll continue to bring you episodes exploring the archive and the ever-changing landscape of literary sounds with all new stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb network. Subscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout. Cheers to Season 6 ..read more

SUMMARY  How can artists harness algorithmic processes to generate poetry, music, and dance? And what can we learn from the longer history of creative coding and early experiments in human-computer collaboration? In this live episode recorded during June's 2024 SpokenWeb Symposium, producers Nicholas Beauchesne and Chelsea Miya venture into the roots and future directions of algorithmic art. Thank you to interviewees Michael O’Driscoll, Kevin William Davis, and Kate Sicchio, as well as the live studio audience. * SOUNDFX & MUSIC The score was created by Nix Nihil through remixing samp ..read more

SUMMARY  In this month’s episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts is taking over the airwaves.  ShortCuts is the monthly minisode that takes you on a deep dive into archival sound through a short ‘cut’ of audio. In this fifth season, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod has been presenting a series of live conversations recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium – and in this full episode, we’re rolling out the last of those recordings. You’ll hear from Moynan King, Erica Isomura and Rémy Bocquillon. You’ll also hear the voices of our then-supervising producer Kate Moffatt and o ..read more

ARCHIVAL AUDIO All archival audio played in this episode is from SpokenWeb’s Ultimatum collection—including interviews conducted by Mathieu Aubin and Ella Jando-Saul with Alan Lord, Fortner Anderson, Sheila Urbanoski and Jerome Poynton, as a way of building this archival collection—with the exception of one clip of Alan Lord sourced from here.  WORKS CITED Schulman, Sarah. The Gentrification of The Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination. University of California Press, 2013.  ..read more

EPISODE NOTES A fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. Stay tuned for monthly episodes of ShortCuts on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly SpokenWeb podcast episode. If you are a SpokenWeb RA with an archival clip to feature on ShortCuts, do write to us at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com with your pitch. Host and Series Producer: Katherine McLeod Supervising Producer: Maia Harris Sound Design: James Healey Transcription: Yara Ajeeb ARCHIVAL AUDIO Listen to the entire recording of Maxine Gadd reading at Sir ..read more

Adam Hammond is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Far Shore: Indie Games, Superbrothers, and the Making of Jett (Coach House, 2021) and Literature in the Digital Age (Cambridge UP, 2016). His is editor of Cambridge Critical Concepts: Technology and Literature (Cambridge UP, 2023) and The Cambridge Companion to Literature in a Digital Age (forthcoming, Cambridge UP, 2024). He co-edits the series Cambridge Elements of Digital Literary Studies. His work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Wired. * Works Cited Marit J. MacArthur ..read more