Aire air Sunnd – by Ear and Eye

Here’s a refreshing change! We’ve been banging on about the “Primacy of Speech” since Island Voices first started, as part of the mission to positively acknowledge the communication skills we all possess in whichever languages we speak – irrespective of any additional literacy we may or may not also have. The title “Progress Report” perhaps brings something rather dry and dusty to mind, and doesn’t necessarily scream “Read me!” at everyone, but this one offers something different. Co-ordinated by Sharon Pisani, Aire air Sunnd project officer, it’s a collection of unscripted video recordings offered by participating university and other partners, all introduced by CEUT chair Ùisdean Robertson. The contributions are mostly in English, but the mix of accents may reveal (or perhaps conceal?) a linguistically diverse competence in more than one of the speakers! And, of course, apart from regional accents, there are various other features unique to natural speech. Tone of voice, rhythm stress and intonation patterns, facial expressions, physical gestures and other accompanying body language – all these are additional expressive elements that elude capture in the printed word.

Have a look and listen here:

We may hope that the variety of voices will keep the listener interested from beginning to end, by presenting the information – or “telling the story” indeed – in a different, perhaps more engaging, way than pages of written text. (Okay, “skimreading” may not be an option for the spoken word if time is short, but YouTube’s “Chapters” function is an alternative if you want to skip forwards at any point – or backwards – to focus on a particular speaker…)

Plus, there’s more – appealing to the eye as well as to the ear!

The Aberdeen team put together these two eye-catching posters for the Digital Fèis to explain in more detail how their Wellbeing strand is developing out of the workshops with which they started.

Packed with information, they also contain images of artefacts and photographs from the local Gaelic walks led by Archie Campbell.

You can click on the images of these posters to enlarge them and examine the detail more closely. And you can see more images and explanations of the artefacts on CEUT’s project page for the Wellbeing workshops.

And finally, as the pictures below show, the St Andrews digitisers were kept busy throughout the same event. Again, you can click on the image to enlarge it, and will then be able to click through one more time on individual pictures to go straight to the 3D or video exhibit on the project’s Digital Fèis page.