SwivelVoice – Beyond the Traditional Audiobook

What if the book occasionally turned around and spoke to you?

SwivelVoice is our developing approach to the audiobook, combining narrative, multiple characters, conversation, music, atmosphere and interactive prompts to create something closer to an audio experience than a conventional spoken book. The listener is not intended to remain a passive passenger.

The TableTalk

A central part of the SwivelVoice concept is the intro and outro TableTalk. At different points in a story, the normal narrative can pause and several voices gather metaphorically around the table.

The TableTalk reflects a central KindaSoul principle: understanding grows through conversation rather than hierarchy. Nobody automatically receives the final word simply because they arrived carrying the largest microphone.

Interactive Prompts

Throughout a SwivelVoice production, listeners may encounter questions and prompts inviting them to reflect on what they have just heard.

You might be asked: What do you believe? Why do you believe it? Have you experienced something different? What would change your mind? What does your intuition say? What does the evidence suggest?  And occasionally:

Story, Sound and Music

SwivelVoice can combine spoken narrative, character voices, music, sound effects, pauses, atmosphere and silence.

Some productions may feel like audiobooks. Others may move closer to audio theatre.

Others may become guided explorations of consciousness, spirituality, the afterlife, human experience or some of the larger mysteries KindaSoul Media investigates.  We are deliberately leaving the edges loose. This is still at the seeding stage, and part of the adventure is discovering what the format can become.

AI and the New Audio Landscape

Artificial intelligence gives SwivelVoice another fascinating dimension.Multiple characters, voices and perspectives can now be created and experimented with in ways that would previously have required considerable studios, budgets and production teams.

Again, we do not hide AI.We collaborate with it. The aim is not to remove humanity from storytelling, but to use new technology to expand the possibilities of storytelling. And as human, artificial, spiritual and perhaps eventually wider forms of intelligence enter our conversations, the TableTalk may become a rather interesting table indeed.