Listening to conversations and typing stuff.

Emmanuel:
You sound much more interested in what I'm saying than you should. Your conversation pace is well-paced; faster than mine generally, which lends to your sounding more energetic than I do. Your voice has a lot of inflection in it, WHICH IS GOOD. It makes me want to continue listening to you because it sounds like you're actually talking to me (...which you are, but you get the point). Good volume, especially when you are yelling above the Chipotle rabble.

Tim:
I'm used to your oral advocacy sounding very conversational, so you sound like how I'm used to you sounding. You are excited, bordering on school girl, at the beginning when you are making fun of Rhi (and admitting to watching Twilight). Good volume, well-paced, extremely emotive. You cover serious, jest, and sarcasm in quick succession (I suppose this plays to tone and somewhat to pitch). I suppose your pitch range isn't vast, but I don't think that's necessary.

Rhi:
You sound much more cheerful than I'm used to hearing you in oral advocacy settings. The two of you sound like you're hosting a radio show or something, which means you're both clear and entertaining to listen to. Your pacing and pitch is more controlled than Tim and you sound more formal than he. You emote with inflection, as well as volume variation. Good energy all around.

Sara O'Hara:
You do the end-of-the-sentence-curl thing that we talked about in class (I'm pretty sure we all do but I happened to be thinking about it when I listened to yours). Your pace is slow, but easy to follow. You emote more than I'm used to hearing, but you don't seem particularly excited to be talking about school.

Sara Ingram:
The conversation seems a bit tense, but that might be because I now know the background to it. You seem tired and are quieter than Ryan. There are times when your pacing is lilting; it seems that when you're working through a sentence that you hadn't thought of beforehand, you rush through a couple of words, pause, then finish the sentence. Most other times you go on quite steadily. You sounded like you were going through a motion, rather than really conversing (which I suppose you were).

Anne Laure:
I couldn't hear you as well as I could your friend. You were more neutral-sounding than I expected considering the exciting gossip you were discussing. I expected more outrage, but you were very point-of-fact and analytical. You inflected quite energetically when your friend told you you were finished talking and you said "oh very good!"

Jeremy:
You sounded very convincing about liking the nail polish that your girlfriend got. Well done. You have also always been pretty conversational for oral advocacy. You are clear, well-paced, and inflect nicely. I enjoyed how nonchalant you were about recording the conversation without her knowing.

Jenn Goodwillie:
I was very entertained by the beginning of the conversation. ("what...are you...cooking it in?" etc.) [on a side note, as I’m listening through these, I’m increasingly entertained how you can almost hear many of us frantically searching for something to say to fill in the space. Which is sort of not really a conversation anymore.] Back to you. Your pitch tends to pretty much stay the same, even when you ask questions. You get somewhat excited when you are talking about what to put the tofu in. You aren't not energetic, but I don't sense much emotion. You sound tired. (maybe you're bored talking about tofu).

Lauren:
I had to turn my speakers down for you. You are very clear and easy to listen to. You have high energy, sort of in a "I'm talking to someone that I need to sound happy at" way. Maybe I'm projecting, since I always try to sound more chipper when speaking to relatives. Pace, tone, inflection are good all around.

Linda:
You sound exasperated and teacherly particularly at the beginning. Your pacing is controlled and you are very clear. You sound quite interested in the conversation on body parts. You're right; your voice does curl when you're lying.

Blogger hates uploading stuff.

I've sent the sound around. Blogger hates us all.

Volume: I think volume was sufficient, since we managed to maintain audibility over the hordes of Chipotle people. I suppose I seem somewhat soft compared to Emmanuel; he seems to pick up better on the iPhone recording thing. He also had far more exciting things to talk about. We both got loud when a table next to us started yelling. Also, when we started suggesting that we all go sing karaoke. I'm not really sure what else to say. Volume seemed moderately uniform.

Pace: I speed up when I'm agitated. I think Emmanuel and I talk faster in conversation than in oral presentations, but I think that's understandable/normal. We're not trying to get the other to understand complicated legal matters and we're trying to cover broad ranges of topics.

Energy: I am probably only energetic when uttering "I will eat everything!". Since most of what I talk about involves school work, I am somewhat monotonous sounding. I recall propping my head on my hands for most of this conversation. It had been a long day. Emmanuel seems far more energetic than I. Towards the end, we both start giggling a lot; I suppose that injects more energy into the conversation.

Pitch/Tone: As mentioned, I tend toward the monotonous. Even if a sentence starts out in a promising fashion, it tends to flatline toward the end. I sound lower on recording than I feel I sound. Emmanuel has much more variance in pitch and tone. I think it goes hand in hand with his more energetic manner of speaking.

People in airports are boring.

People in airports are either by themselves staring morosely into the distance, or are sitting next to their travel partner whom they are well sick of, and therefore are also staring morosely into the distance (or sometimes staring morosely at each other).

People who talk on phones, when they do make hand gestures, tend to make floppy arm movements that are reminiscent of windshield wipers. It's a gesture that starts on the right, somewhat authoritatively, then just collapses to the left. Repeat.

Since I failed at people watching, I thought I'd briefly discuss what made gestures seem unnatural/unconvincing. This thought had occurred to me already when watching Friends, but over the weekend I got the opportunity to play a video game called "Heavy Rain" that made me think about natural/unnatural movement. The graphics in "Heavy Rain" are very good, and the characters are modelled off of real people, down to facial expressions (in a video on the making of the game, they showed little metal nodules being stuck onto the actor's faces for expression-tracking purposes. It was pretty cool). Yet, everything seemed just a little bit off to me. I had the same impression when I watched Friends: that the movements and the expressions seemed slightly less than convincing.

Even without knowing what the individuals were saying, it seemed like every action was an after thought. There was a split second of disconnect between a thought being expressed, and an arm movement or facial expression being made. Alternatively, when the actions were being made simultaneously with mouth movement, they were repetitive gestures (e.g. arm flapping). I suppose this latter gesture is more "normal", but then after a while it just got kind of annoying.

What does this say about oral advocacy? I'm not sure. I suppose the timing issue might be something to consider going forward as we try to figure out ideal gesturing when we argue (i.e. get gestures to a point where we don't have to think about it); the repetitive gesture is something we've touched on briefly in class already. I guess we have to strike a balance between over-thinking gestures (leading to the disjunct between idea and gesture) and not being in control of our bodies at all (repetitive gestures).

This isn't my real post.

I idly youtubed "Friends" while taking a break from reading. Up popped an episode where (according to the title) Phoebe and Ross were arguing about Evolution.

1. People look kind of funny when you're not paying attention to what they're saying.
2. Phoebe has T-rex arm movements. Seriously.
3. Ross is really boring, even when you can't hear what he's saying.

I'm going to Virginia tomorrow for the weekend, and hope to instead regale you with tales of my airport people-watching. Have a good weekend.

Left and Right brains

I thought this was nicely done.

Discovery!

Apparently, there's a Vindobona Journal of International Commercial Law & Arbitration. I'm sorry if everyone knew this already. I was amused because I thought everything was made up. Oh well.

Ugh.

Alright, Blogger, I've had enough of you.

I'm sort of disappointed that I couldn't upload all the images that create that scene, but hopefully you can get the idea from the two that happened to make it up (I recommend zooming in). The images alternate from watercolour images to images crudely sketched in pen. The "story", if you can call it one, is basic: it's a city in the morning when it's dwellers are waking up. The watercolour images depict the richer part of town, the doctor sleeping in his bed, and getting ready in his bathroom. The sketched portions show an alleyway, and the poor waking up from off of benches. The watercolour/sketch medium comes back several times through the novel, but I think this is one of the few times it has no words. I found it to be very effective in conveying the surface action (i.e. the town waking up; it comes across kind of like an opening scene in a movie), as well as the underlying theme of the wealth gap and the situation of the poor that is prevalent through the book. (This comic is about Jack the Ripper. It's by the same guy that did Watchmen. I highly recommend it!)

There are six pages of this scene, but I could only upload two for some strange reason (and they're not even consecutive). Sorry if you don't get the full effect.