Today I attended our Communication Studies and Multimedia students’ FRESH* Symposium, which features the best of their work in a poster format. It was fabulous. At 1.30pm, Dr. David Ogborn, a sound artist and professor of multimedia in my department introduced his laptop orchestra. That was a great moment. Listening to 1280 Lounge filled with the tweets and chirps of the laptop orchestra’s music as the performers clicked on their keyboards was surreal and incredibly cool. We even had some members of the orchestra do a “live-coding” performance, which was a new experience for me. How strange to watch someone type in code into the computer and then hear the sonic changes that the codes brings to the sounds you are listening to. I was sceptical at first, but soon I was transfixed. Live coding. Epic.
There were many presentations by a very good number of our students. My undergraduate honours student, Souzan Mansour, presented the findings of her content analysis on “Pathos in Barack Obama’s Speech Style.” – an excellent poster presentation.
All in all, FRESH* was a very successful event. And the faculty organizer, my colleague, Dr. Christine Quail, is to be commended for guiding the students through the process of putting it together.
A great afternoon.