Great piece (thanks, Bleeding Edge) by Randy Kennedy in today’s NYT about podcasting audio tours: With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour :
The creators of this guide, David Gilbert, a professor of communication at Marymount Manhattan College, and a group of his students, describe it on their Web site as a way to “hack the gallery experience” or “remix MoMa,” which they do with a distinctly collegiate blend of irony, pop music and heavy breathing. It is one of the newest adaptations in the world of podcasting – downloading radio shows, music and kitchen-sink audio to an MP3 player.
Specifically, these museum guides are an outgrowth of a recent podcasting trend called “sound seeing,” in which people record narrations of their travels – walking on the beach, wandering through the French Quarter – and upload them onto the Internet for others to enjoy. In that spirit, the creators of the unauthorized guides to the Modern have also invited anyone interested to submit his or her own tour for inclusion on the project’s Web site, mod.blogs.com/art_mobs. (Instructions are on the Web site.)
As Charles of Bleeding Edge points out, this is an outgrowth of the soundseeing movement, where people offer an audio narrative on something they do, or someplace they go.
What I’d like to see are audio commentaries to accompany movies, TV programs, sporting events, done by amateurs with interesting stuff to say. Is anyone doing this yet? A sort of alternative director’s commentary: Easy enough to synchronise with the program in question, it would be like having a knowledgeable friend come along to whisper interesting snippets of trivia in your ear while you watch. If nobody has really started off the movement, I want to call them Podentaries, just so I can get a silly name in there somewhere. Who’s up for it? I call Bladerunner.
“Podguides” sounds to be a better name
A “podentary” sounds very sedentary. How about “podasight”? Being a guru, could you suggest the best podcast software?
Sure, PodGuides definitely sound better. And they are it’s better worked out also. PodGuides are accompanied with an overview map (jpg or pdf) of the area (be it a museum, city, place, picture) and a picture for eacht track (stopover) incorporaated into thi ID3 tag of the mp3 files. that way, people with more advanced players (iPod, pocket PC, …) can actually see what they should be looking at whilst listening to the tracks… Have a look at the site. We’ve even created a PodGuide generator (free for mac, win and linux) that simplifies the whole process of creating all that.