Post 300. I break my resolve for this.

Hear Pattern Recognition as read by the members of the William Gibson Board.

Blogger has just introduced a new audio blog function, with a free trial. I got the idea that the Board members could each use their free trial to read a couple of paragraphs of Pattern Recognition.

I'm aware that there are serious Copyright problems involved, which is why I chose to start the reading. The first chapter of PR is provided on the web, so I'm assuming it's OK to read it aloud as well. Otherwise send in the lawyers.....

But remember folks, it's at your own risk if you do this....

A bit of logistics - If you're going to do a reading, send a post to the board, reserving the next paragraphs, before calling in your reading. You have an hour to edit your post, and you can insert the link when you have it.

So here we go:

Pattern Recognition
by William Gibson
read by WGB Members

Page 1 read by Fashionpolice

Page 1 continued read by Fashionpolice

Page 1- 2 read by Fashionpolice

This also gives members the opportunity to hear if all that speech therapy actually worked.

P.S.: It could be great fun if WG used audio in his blog as well. He won't have to spend time typing, but can just call in the blog from his phone. Please Bill, Please.....

[This message was edited by Fashionpolice on June 12, 2003 at 02:49 PM.]

Sounds like a good idea Fash
I dunno about doing a rding of it meself
but I can do Soundesign , fx /whatever it seems like it needs.
That can all be a collab too
Have some fun with it
Cheers

Continuing my further adventures in DigitalLand begun by joining this board in the first place:
I made a Blog account on Blogger and then signed up and read my excerpts over the phone.
Unfortunately I got slightly confused by the interface instructions and so one of them was recorded twice when I thought I'd erased it. But here are the links to the next two paragraphs.

Coolhunter.

Mirror World.

I read my excerpts from the text posted here on the site so I don't know where we're up to pagewise. But my last sentence ends with

" ... sleep-hair poking up like a toilet brush."

[This message was edited by Sentinel400 on June 12, 2003 at 04:07 PM.]

Excellent reading Sentinel 400. I'm liking this project...!

Take a bow yourself for your ingenious ideas for playing with tech. The things you get me to do! I would never have thought I'd be reading aloud to people I barely know!

Tip for "overseas" readers. The phone number you will be asked to call ends with "BLOG". The letters on your phone won't necessarily correspond with these letters. Mine didn't anyway. I had to google an image of a phone dial to find the right numbers.

BLOG = 2564

I was stumped by this too but then i had a sudden flash of inspiration. I pulled out my cellphone which DOES have numbers on it and wrote them down.
Further tip: you don't get too many tries before the software posts your reading for you. three, maybe? So just relax and do it without thinking about it too much!

[This message was edited by Sentinel400 on June 12, 2003 at 04:52 PM.]

I wouldn't dare reading,
my awful accent would ruin the whole thing.

But I just wanted to ask : readers don't have to read through blogger, don't they?
I mean : overseas people can record their own sound file themselves, and then upload it somewhere.
Blogger is supposed to be more convenient than that, but when it comes to make a long distance phonecall i'm no too sure.
And what about sound quality?

Anyway, that's a nice idea, Fashionpolice
--
ArkanGL

Blogger is simply for the convenience.

Anybody who knows how to make their own mp3-files, and has a site to host them, is welcome to send a link to them.

The quality via Blogger is OK, but it can be improved.

Perhaps SA and others who know a lot about sound can do a bit of post-production when we've gathered more readings.

I think it would be nice to hear some readings with accents. It would reflect the diversity of the board. If you're shy about it, make a shorter reading. One paragraph. Read it through about 10 times before recording. I'm sure it would be fine.

Melissa

Something can be figured out ...
Surely

I was on my way out and up yesterday,
so could only drop those few lines -
but , in gen , what I'm getting at is -
after all the reading are done -
what have you got ?
while I don't particularly want to do the audio cleaning up or integrating , engineering etc.
(as there are others out there who just may want to do so and may have better access to certain tools as well as in the interest of the collab)
at some point I could imagine there will be a need for some audio enviorn , fx ,
even a strain of musik drifting somewhere along the way.
That would be the fun part for me and
why I jumped in .
So again, I say , let's figure it out as it goes
FashionPolice had the initiative to start something so then who knows where it goes from here ...
Better Something than Nothing !
For my bits, this is far more interesting than speculating if uh, J Lo or whomever would be good to play Mollie in Movies that may never happen.
This is 'happening' ...

Cheers all

Considering that members aren't exactly chomping at the bits to do a reading, I think we should limit the project to the first chapter of the book.

Probably a lot less legal issues that way. By the way, are there any lawyers on the board?

Post-production will be a lot more doable as well.

We can say 1 member/1 minute. All in all approximately 10 readings. Somebody else can reread the first 2 bits of PR. I'm most satisfied with file 3, as it's closest to my natural reading style.

Come on folks, call in your readings...

That also sounds good FP.
I venture that unless the collab creation is actually sold (real $ changing hands)
or not approved by Mr. WG
then it's a pretty low flying stealthy affair.
Burn some copies , send to members , etc.

I will give a try at reading next week.

About the legality of this :
I don't think it can be regarded as piracy. Because I don'y really picture people downloading "Pattern_Recognition_as_read_by_fans[MPR_VBR_256kbps_SA_Encoding].rar" on their mule.

But hey... maybe WG has something to say.
It would be great having him reading one of the paragraphs, among us.
But I'm not sure he loves us that much .

--
ArkanGL
(I could try to read with a fake posh English accent, with my French layer underneath... BAD IDEA!)

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fashionpolice:
I'm aware that there are serious Copyright problems involved, which is why I chose to start the reading. The first chapter of PR is provided on the web, so I'm assuming it's OK to read it aloud as well. Otherwise send in the lawyers.....

---

actually the first two chapters are on the web, this site has both of them:

http://mostlyfiction.com/excerpts/patternrecognition.htm

-i enjoyed your readings, thanks.
ptr

it's a re:mote world after all

Looking forward to your reading ArkanGL.

How about you remotepush? It would be nice to have at least one WeeGee (i.e. glaswegian) reading PR.

Uuuh, this sounds fun. And bringing my sexy (not my words!) norwegian accent into it all will rock everyone's world, yeah! Sooo...what do I read? *bangs his head against the wall and tries to do some of that sleeping...*

Just do what we did, Koala:
register with Blogger, go to the phone blogs page, sign up, dial up then open up your copy of PR and read it out loud from where I left off [or read the text off the screen here on the board if it isn't handy]. If ArkanGL doesn't get there before you, of course. The more accents the merrier!

So is there a blogspot (or other) web address where these readings are posted or are they only accessible thru the direct links here in your posts?

Once you register [if you don't have a blog already] there will be a blogspot with your audio posts on it. We just posted these links here for convenience.
Neatness counts!