Track & Field

Back in a previous life as a web developer, Friday afternoons in the office were made a little more bearable thanks to a game called Layer Tennis.  In this game, two artists trade a Photoshop file back and forth every 15 minutes for 10 rounds. Each artist creates 5 banner images from a mashup of the previous rounds plus any other inspiration they care to draw from.

I'd long wondered how Layer Tennis would be played using sound instead of images.  I told Vinnie about the game, and we came up with a longform version for our Trends in Modern Sound Design class.  I'm calling it (sound) Track & Field (recordings).  It's one part Layer Tennis, one part Guerilla Sound, and one part Telephone Game.

We setup two teams: Stephen Swift, Josh Fehrmann, Brian Svoboda, David Backovsky; and Patricia Cardona, Matt Glenn, Mark Caspary, Michael Matthews.  Each week, the team's Pro Tools session would get passed to the next member in line like a baton in a relay race.  Each designer then had 1 hour to create a 30 second audio clip, which would get placed on the master track right after the previous clip ended.  For the first week, everyone created a 30 second sound clip as a jumping off point; so actually, each team was responsible for four Pro Tools sessions, and the one you were personally responsible for that week was just based on where you were in the rotation.

We've been going at this for seven weeks now, and collectively have generated a half-hour of audio: that's 8 relay games, each with seven 30 second sound clips strung together.  We've posted them here for your entertainment... Enjoy!


Group 1, Rotation 1: Stephen, Josh, Brian, David, Stephen, Josh, Brian



Group 2, Rotation 1: Patricia, Matt, Mark, Michael, Patricia, Matt, Mark



Group 1, Rotation 2: Josh, Brian, David, Stephen, Josh, Brian, David



Group 2, Rotation 2: Matt, Mark, Michael, Patricia, Matt, Mark, Michael



Group 1, Rotation 3: Brian, David, Stephen, Josh, Brian, David, Stephen



Group 2, Rotation 3: Mark, Michael, Patricia, Matt, Mark, Michael, Patricia



Group 1, Rotation 4: David, Stephen, Josh, Brian, David, Stephen, Josh



Group 2, Rotation 4: Michael, Patricia, Matt, Mark, Michael, Patricia, Matt