John Barber teaches in The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver. With regard to sound arts, he is  interested in opportunities afforded by Internet radio, online iReportage, transmission arts, and geo-locative audio-based immersive/interactive experiences, especially as they might promote aural compositions/performances/installations as the basis for engaged narrative.

You can learn more about his work at http://www.nouspace.net/john.

"Sounds of My Life :: A Sixties Radio Narrative" seeks to provide an (inter)personal narrative of the politics, civil rights, space exploration, counterculture movement, and popular culture during "The Sixties," a time of intense social, political, and cultural change. Constructed from recordings of the persons or events depicted, and edited to focus attention on the liminal moment, this work combines oral history, field and historical recordings, soundscapes, found sounds, appropriation, and cut ups. Additional aural elements simulate the passage of years or changing radio stations / chapters in the overall narrative. The focus on the broadcast radio medium is intentional as it examines repurposed narrative frameworks fostered by a broad definition of electronic literature as a form of transmission arts. Not a typical radio documentary, however, nor a narrated history, the intent is instead a narrative that remixes the medium of its original telling, empowering listeners to combine the sounds heard with their lived experience to create a meaningful, personal experience. The desired end result is to provide listeners / participants a chronological acousmatic context in which to consider the relevance of historical, political, rhetorical, and cultural experiences seemingly, at first glance, far removed from traditionally accepted aspects / definition(s) of literature, but, upon closer examination / listening / reading, quite evocative of a multivalent, emerging electronic literature. The research question behind this work is, "How can digital sound communication technologies effectively combine oral history, field recordings, and voice samples with additional sound events to create an immersive digital narrative experience?" 

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