"Julie the Amtrak God" puts together flesh and steel and comes out with a haunting gem of a radio story. We are sucked into the dialog between a robot who's just doing her job and a girl who barely swallows her pain. At just three minutes, the piece is as lean and well-packaged as a pop song. But Arsarnow delivers a bittersweet, intimate performance that stirs in you long after the piece finishes. Her concept is genius in its simplicity and nearly flawless in its execution.
This radio experiment is unlike anything else you'll hear on the airwaves. It's a refreshing example of what can be accomplished when someone with an artistic mind (and a penchant for abstraction) approaches the radio medium as a blank canvas. Producer Jenny Asarnow manages to evoke a wide range of emotional responses from us, ranging from melancholy to hilarity, by simply attempting to conduct a philosophical conversation with a computerized voice-recognition system.
Some listeners might be put off by the non-linearity of this piece, but a patient listen will restore your faith in the power of the abstract in radio.
Like most of the other 8 million young people into public radio, I was inspired in large part by This American Life. Everyone has their own reasons for liking it, but mine has to do with a very specific moment that TAL is supremely good at creating. It's that moment of sedate humor-tinged sadness--not the sounds and stories of deep emotion, but those an ironic smile.
"Julie" is that moment in spades, and it's one of the first pieces I genuinely became obsessed with on PRX. I could listen to it hundreds of times and never get sick of it. On one level, the dichotomy between Jenny's lonliness and Julie's digitized voice is hysterical. The pregnant pause before each of Julie's responses is especially weird and entertaining. But the whole time you're struck by the ridiculousness of it all, it never takes away from relating to the intimation of pain in Jenny's voice.
There's something so familiar about the tone of this piece, even though I've never heard anything like it.
Very weird but in a really nice way. I think the term "zen-like" is overused and misused so I won't use that to describe this piece. But it is hypnotic in a way and lovely in a way too. The human voice has a lazy sexiness that makes this encounter alluring in a way one wouldn’t expect. I've heard this technique used before, but it's always in other direction – the recorded voice is always messing-around with a human. I guess that's one thing that’s so wonderful about this; the person is messing with the machine which is something we're told we're not allowed to do anymore.
It was interesting to listen to because it was unpredictable, it was a little long but the length helped the listener to understand what was happening. I liked the way that the piece was organized, without any narrative but with just the phone calls, it helped the listener to draw their own conclusions. The piece was good for radio because it had a vague plot so the listeners didn't have to pay close attention and the noises were interesting enough to make people stop and listen.
Comments for Julie the Amtrak God
Produced by Jenny Asarnow
Other pieces by Jenny Asarnow
Rating Summary
5 comments
Shawn Wen
Posted on November 07, 2007 at 09:09 PM | Permalink
Review of Julie the Amtrak God
"Julie the Amtrak God" puts together flesh and steel and comes out with a haunting gem of a radio story. We are sucked into the dialog between a robot who's just doing her job and a girl who barely swallows her pain. At just three minutes, the piece is as lean and well-packaged as a pop song. But Arsarnow delivers a bittersweet, intimate performance that stirs in you long after the piece finishes. Her concept is genius in its simplicity and nearly flawless in its execution.
Aaron Henkin
Posted on August 16, 2006 at 10:49 AM | Permalink
Review of Julie the Amtrak God
This radio experiment is unlike anything else you'll hear on the airwaves. It's a refreshing example of what can be accomplished when someone with an artistic mind (and a penchant for abstraction) approaches the radio medium as a blank canvas. Producer Jenny Asarnow manages to evoke a wide range of emotional responses from us, ranging from melancholy to hilarity, by simply attempting to conduct a philosophical conversation with a computerized voice-recognition system.
Some listeners might be put off by the non-linearity of this piece, but a patient listen will restore your faith in the power of the abstract in radio.
Nicholas van der Kolk
Posted on December 12, 2005 at 06:16 PM | Permalink
Review of Julie the Amtrak God
Like most of the other 8 million young people into public radio, I was inspired in large part by This American Life. Everyone has their own reasons for liking it, but mine has to do with a very specific moment that TAL is supremely good at creating. It's that moment of sedate humor-tinged sadness--not the sounds and stories of deep emotion, but those an ironic smile.
"Julie" is that moment in spades, and it's one of the first pieces I genuinely became obsessed with on PRX. I could listen to it hundreds of times and never get sick of it. On one level, the dichotomy between Jenny's lonliness and Julie's digitized voice is hysterical. The pregnant pause before each of Julie's responses is especially weird and entertaining. But the whole time you're struck by the ridiculousness of it all, it never takes away from relating to the intimation of pain in Jenny's voice.
There's something so familiar about the tone of this piece, even though I've never heard anything like it.
Richard Paul
Posted on August 01, 2005 at 12:08 PM | Permalink
Review of Julie the Amtrak God
Very weird but in a really nice way. I think the term "zen-like" is overused and misused so I won't use that to describe this piece. But it is hypnotic in a way and lovely in a way too. The human voice has a lazy sexiness that makes this encounter alluring in a way one wouldn’t expect. I've heard this technique used before, but it's always in other direction – the recorded voice is always messing-around with a human. I guess that's one thing that’s so wonderful about this; the person is messing with the machine which is something we're told we're not allowed to do anymore.
Sarah Cook
Posted on March 14, 2005 at 07:51 AM | Permalink
Review of Julie the Amtrak God
It was interesting to listen to because it was unpredictable, it was a little long but the length helped the listener to understand what was happening. I liked the way that the piece was organized, without any narrative but with just the phone calls, it helped the listener to draw their own conclusions. The piece was good for radio because it had a vague plot so the listeners didn't have to pay close attention and the noises were interesting enough to make people stop and listen.