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The Evolution Of Y

Weblink: The Evolution Of Y

from The Evolution of Y, 25.05.09

http://evolutionofy.blogspot.com/

The Evolution of Y
is an audio documentary that details the story of a person who has
undergone gender reassignment during her life. It explores themes
of transgenderism, nature vs. nurture, conceptions of ‘the normal’, and
sexual evolution and social identity through the telling of the life
story of a transgender person. The audio documentary is accompanied by a blog where you will be able to find additional interviews and footage detailing the psychological transformation and social practice required when changing ones body. The interviewees featured in this project are as follows:

  • "Y" - Y was born male and has spent the past few decades living as a female.
  • Vikki Sinnott - a psychologist who works with transgender and gender-varied people.
  • Georgia
    Dacakis - a speech pathologist who has worked with the transgender
    community for several decades. Georgia's research on speech pathology
    for transgender people has appeared in international publications.
  • Sally
    Goldner - Sally is the media spokesperson for Transgender Victoria, a
    volunteer-run organisation that assists transgender and gender-varied
    persons.

Our hope is that
the main piece - the 15 minute audio documentary - will stimulate
thought and discussion and that listeners will want to listen to the
longer interviews which provide for a richer examination and insight
into issues facing gender-varied people.
All
our interviewees in this project are highly experienced in their field
and their articulate, illuminating responses to our questions provide
for riveting listening.

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  • Anonymous's picture

    13.06.09 — Natasha Mitchell

    (Note to wider public -

    (Note to wider public - these comments should be taken in the context of this being a university class exercise! These RMIT projects are very sophisticated, and we welcome much simpler and entirely amateur contributions to Gene Pool too!).

    Hi Team (James, Elizabeth, Maryanne)

    Thanks for adding your radio doco to (the) Gene Pool...

    This is a *great* take on the Gene Pool thematic challenge..the evolution of a gender, a self, an identity...good one!

    And what an excellent interviewee you have in Y - she's really generous and open with her story, and relaxed in her telling of it.

    Nice quality recordings technically - this makes all the difference.

    Production wise, perhaps you could explore a few other elements to bring the production to life. For example, interviews are only one element...and it's worth exploring other ways to bring a dramatic tension to an audio story through sound, and create turning points in the narrative beyond wall-to-wall talk. As a listener you want to feel emotionally engaged with the material, and at times the production felt more like a monologue. This can certainly be a powerful approach in itself though, and your subject, Y, is a strong presence.

    But, for example, including some of your questions can help with narrative structure sometimes, so can recording the activity of the interviewees on location in the environment you're in with them, or even the hustle and bustle of making a cup of tea with them. Sometimes with these stories of personal transformation another device is to record a conversation with them in front of their photo album, and it can trigger a different sort of feel to an interview...more reflective, with vignettes that are personal and anecdotal...and these can be inter-mixed, interlaced with the face to face interview excerpts in interesting ways.

    The blog with extras is a good idea, as are the reflections in your personal project blogs. I wonder if a little more explanation and context could be included with the clips on the project blog? For example - a bit more detail about the videos you've popped up - even a sentence will give people a bit more of a motivation to view the videos with Sally Goldner, who is a great addition to the project.

    Writing in haste just now, but I'll possibly follow up with you a bit later in the year with your group via your lecturers if that's okay?
    Feel free to add your thoughts here too.

    Big thanks for contributing to the Gene pool! And good luck with your next projects.

    Natasha Mitchell
    Presenter + science broadcaster - ABC Radio National
    http://abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind
    +
    Gene Pool coproducer

  • Anonymous's picture

    16.06.09 — The Evolution of Y

    Hi Natasha, Thanks for the

    Hi Natasha,

    Thanks for the feedback. Your interview suggestions are exactly the kind of feedback and advice I've been looking for. Our interviewees should be all willing to talk with us again as they've shown enthusiasm and support so far, so I'm excited to go back and try out the methods you're suggesting. Both Elizabeth and I are keen to further produce this doco especially now that semester is over and we have time! At this point it is still very much a rough cut and I feel that we can get a deeper more dynamic story going. I will further develop the blog as well as there is still more footage to add and it obviously needs some cleaning up!

    Please do contact us, we would love any further input. Thanks again for your comments.

    James

  • Anonymous's picture

    03.06.09 — Pool team

    This is such a clever

    This is such a clever interpretation of the theme. I find gender/ transgender very fascinating, and I'm really interested to learn more and hear real stories.

    I tried to download your movie but it's a very large file. I'm on a pretty good computer with a pretty quick connection but there was still some trouble.. I ended up with half the audio and no image at all.

    However! I read all the text on your site and I am really keen to watch the video now.

    How do you see this as working on Pool? How would you like to see your piece evolve on Pool?

    Amelia (Pool intern)

  • Anonymous's picture

    16.06.09 — The Evolution of Y

    Hi Amelia, Sorry about the

    Hi Amelia,

    Sorry about the video size! I'll get in there and clean up the presentation of the blog and sort out the downloads. We got a bit busy during semester and unfortunately a few aspects of the presentation suffered. We are, however, going to develop the documentary now our schedules have cleared and are excited about such positive responses from the Pool. I am excited as well to be able to engage with The Pool as it's such a great creative and productive platform and network.

    In terms of the concept working on Pool, I need to first re-present all the downloadable and extra footage and then would like to see people mix and collaborate in possibilities for piecing together the stories involved. I'm going to re-fine my version of the story and post it as the 'center-piece'. It would be interesting to see if the blog could evolve into a kind of documentary training ground for people interested in storytelling.

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