As new(er) communicative landscapes emerge, humanities educators and research in the teaching of cultural heritage have enthusiastically embraced digital and visual culture. From more (g)local understandings of cosmopolitanism to understanding how locative literacies and contemporary technologies are mediating youth identity making with place, the digital has made its mark. Despite this renewed emphasis on multimodality, however, the aural and sonic possibilities of composing with and through sound is ignored. In response to this tuning out, #hearmyhome is an “everyday” cultural heritage informatics project that interrogates how individuals write community through and with sound. Examining everyday people produced soundscapes, #hearmyhome inquires how hearing difference and listening to communities may re-educate the senses and attune us towards cultural difference. Ultimately developing materials that hear, recognize, and sustain community literacies and cultural rhetorics, #hearmyhome asks us to take heed of the frequencies and rhythms of culture as we architect, design, and teach towards more equitable landscapes for learning.
So, What Does This Look / Sound Like?
#hearmyhome will function as a mobile website with a participatory map-archive of soundscapes composed. Given #hearmyhome’s pedagogical intent, the project will be built and co-constructed through a series of “sonic events” happening across February, March, and April. As a participatory cultural heritage informatics project, we hope to circulate the project through a variety of writing partners/organizations (e.g., National Writing Project, #CLMOOC, #WalkMyWorld, Becoming 3lectric) in hopes to gain new followers and participants. Outside of the more participatory aspect of the project, #hearmyhome will also include archived cultural soundscapes taken from pre-existing audio-based community literacy sites/projects.
Interested in an Audio Overview? Listen here and follow us on SoundCloud!
Want to Participate?
Using the #hearmyhome tag, users will have the opportunity to input basic profile information (i.e. first name, age, where they live, text descriptors), and record the everyday soundscapes of their communities, rituals, cultures, etc. Audio, comments, usernames, and locations will pull into a live map hosted on the mobile site. #hearmyhome will only pull in social media updates for users with geotagging services turned on (Instagram, Vine, Twitter) and #hearmyhome included in post. In addition to the “live” map hosted on the mobile site, sonic curricular resources for youth and teachers interested in composing everyday cultural heritage with and through sound (lesson/project plans, etc.) will be included and hosted on the site.
Focusing on “everyday” cultural heritage, #hearmyhome demonstrates how youth and adults can hear and listen to better understand difference and community literacies through expansive personal learning networks (PLN). Illustrated by the mobile site’s larger open-networked soundscapes map, #hearmyhome is an affinity space wherein participants share both knowledge and life experiences (through sonic events and audio) as a way to form interpersonal relationships and create a fuller understanding of community and culture.
For more information and up-to-date announcements join our mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bF7Ed9
Photo “Trip Planning” by Flickr user Shawn Harquail. Used under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license
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