Birds, Traffic, Machines
RiR # 99, S14, E07, July 20, 2026
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Connecting sounds in new and exploratory ways
Soundscapes, from Dubai, UAE, Vancouver, Washington, and Victoria, Canada, all by John Barber, woven by him as a sonic tapestry. "Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines." From our Workshop series.
Access the episode script
Iterations
Framework Radio #808, July 3, 2022. Learn more at the Framework website→
Background
Quick Info
"Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines"
Episode #01, Re-Imagined Radio Workshop
Sound tapestry woven from three soundscapes
Listening Thoughts
A battle over soundscapes rages around the globe. Soundscapes, recordings of sounds heard and indicative of specific places, are systematically stolen by the shadowy Secret Society for Sonic Sobriety, while daring liberators find and return them!
A cache of stolen soundscapes was discovered hidden in a cave behind Yellowstone's Undine Falls. Carved from the volanic rock basalt by the waters of Lava Creek for millennia, the grotto harbored hundreds of captive soundscapes—acoustic snapshots of natural, environmental, and human activity at a specific place and time. Each soundscape was imprisoned in an empty Chambord whiskey bottle and defiantly sealed with a corn cob plug, according to officials.
The Secret Society for Sonic Sobriety claimed responsibility for the auditory heist. Their radical manifesto—to cleanse the world of unwanted soundscapes—will continue, they say, as they ruthlessly purge any soundscape that fails to uphold their sacred scripts. Brave Sonic Soldiers, they vow, will continue these audacious operations.
But the Society met its match. These bottled sounds were rescued by Captain Craig McKenzie and the crew of the legendary submarine Omega.
Turning the rescued audio over to Yellowstone authorities, McKenzie declared: "We are far afield from our headquarters in Latitude Zero, but we will travel to the ends of the Earth to return stolen soundscapes. A world without soundscapes is a world of diminished imagination!"
McKenzie and his crew are battle-hardened soundscape hunters. They have excavated audio buried in abandoned subway tunnels, intercepted it within civic monuments, and tracked it through underground lava tubes and decaying attics. Still other recordings were unearthed from steel boxes buried beneath isolated fields and pastures.
"These soundscapes are the living tissue of human connection," McKenzie warns. "Hearing the distinct sounds of different cultures and places is to understand them. And it is that very understanding that unites humanity! These recordings expose the unbreakable bond between a people and the land they inhabit. The Society wants to break that bond. They want isolation and rigid control. We fight for empathy and global connection. We will prevail."
Among the soundscapes rescued were three recorded by John Barber. One in Dubai, UAE. Another, recorded in Vancouver, Washington. And a third, recorded in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Barber wove these soundscapes into a single sonic tapestry where the narrative is based on mechanical and environmental sounds, rather than human dialogue.
Profane or essential? You listen, and decide.
Production
Contents
This episode features field recordings made in Dubai, UAE, Vancouver, Washington, and Victoria, Canada, by John Barber. These contents were first heard as episode #808, July 3-11, 2022, on Framework Radio, broadcast on radio art stations around the world.
Statement
At the heart of every soundscape is the idea of sounds that might be heard at a particular place and time. But sounds recorded in different places and at different times can connect through similarity, serendipity, and synchronicity. This project explores how those connections can create meaningful experiences and suggest narratives without relying on human speech This gives the field recordist and/or sound artist large latitude. Including creating collages of sounds heard in different places at different times. This helps produce compositions interpreting, describing, and documenting a place, in time, over time. And promote the sense of realism conveyed by the soundscape.
Sounds recorded at one location, at one time, may connect, through either sonic similarity or serendipity, with sounds recorded at another location, at a different time. The results are sonic tapestries representative of fluid time and place but solidly grounded in rich listening experiences.
This realism evolves from the process of making and considering what is captured by the the field recordist's microphone. In my practice, composing a soundscape is often a process of selecting, editing, and juxtaposing elements of different recordings made at different times to create a sense of a place, to promote a believable experience of being in that space. This sense of structure and reality comes from active aural engagement for both myself and those listening to my works.
This work, "Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines," seeks to provide a constructed scenario that connects realistic sounds in new and exploratory ways. That asks listeners to pay attention to aural details of different, often divergent, acoustic environments. And find in their overlap and interplay connecting dialogue.
Soundscapes then not only provide ways of understanding places through their sounds, but prompt listeners to explore new ways of understanding those places through listening. "Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines" offers two opportunities for listeners.
First, it foregrounds the aural world. This pushes one to listen to and contemplate the sounds that might be heard.
Second, it helps listeners engage with unique features and affordances of the sonic environment. To cultivate ways of hearing dialogs between the sonic elements of that environment. Stories told with sounds other than human voice.
Significance
This episode, "Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines," is the first in a new series we're calling "Re-Imagined Radio Workshop." The word Workshop implies experimental making of sound-based storytelling.
For this, the first episode, we begin with Richard Hand's and Mary Traynor's positioning of speech, sound, music, and silence as the "constituent parts" of radio drama (Hand, Richard J. and Mary Traynor. Radio Drama Handbook: Audio Drama in Context and Practice. Continuum International Publishing Group. 2011, 40).
Traditionally, speech carries the greatest weight in storytelling because it is our primary form of communication. This work asks listeners to consider whether other sounds can also communicate meaning, emotion and story. The narrative is ultimately created through the listener's imagination.
"Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines" is an answer to that question. Woven from three distinctly different soundscapes. Each recorded at different times and places. This work privileges environmental and mechanical sound sources, rather than human speech, as its "constituent parts."
Despite this separation, this work offers sonic simularity, synchronicity, and serendipity sufficient to promote a sense of narrative completeness.
Producer's Notes
Traditionally, speech is weighted more heavily when considering sound-based storytelling, as this is the primary form of human communication. But other sounds, and music, even silence are part of the mix.
Episodes of this new "Re-Imagined Radio Workshop" series are meant to encourage active listening to sounds around you and imagining stories in what you hear.
I've imagined a story to help start your thinking. A secret society stealing soundscapes. A band of brave liberators finding and returning them to the world of sound diversity. Now it's your turn. Listen and imagine. And if you like, let us know your story.
The launch of the Re-Imagined Radio Workshop series reflects our continued exploration of new forms of sound-based storytelling. Future Workshop editions will feature additional soundscapes, sound walks, sound spas, sound-based narratives, and experimental radio theatre designed to encourage active listening and creative engagement with sound. Each a curated listening experience designed to expand our sound-based storytelling, and leave you feeling refreshed. Relaxed. Re-energized for what lies ahead.
Now, get comfortable and listen as Re-Imagined Radio presents "Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines."
Thank you for listening.
— John F. Barber
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