Here is the audio work:

Synopsis:

It is an audio work which records the sounds I heard when I was in my bedroom. I recored the sounds from outside the window and also some sounds of movements when I wrote my essay in my bedroom. I sat down on the chair, turned on the computer and started to type words. When I was confused about the essay, I heard birds’ chirping and even the sound of cat outside the window. Raindrops keeps falling on the windowsill. I stopped typing due to the hard essay and turned to drawing so that I can relax my mind.

What I think the good part of the work is that layers of sound is showed on the work. Layers of sound can improve the hearing experience, and it can show spaciousness. But I think the audio should record more clear sound, because there are some noises in the audio. It would be better if there was a device that could record clear sound.

When I sat in my bedroom quietly and listened to the environment for about 2 minutes, I found some interesting things. Many sounds appeared and I started to recognise them and listen to them carefully. I can hear birds’ chirping, the sound of raining and even cat’s sound. And I also can hear a fuzzy voice about people chatting. And then I started do the activity I usually do in my bedroom. When I did the activity, I discovered some relationships between sound, physical space and movements. Sound exists in our surroundings. When people sat quietly in a physical space, they can hear different layers of sound from near to far. Then when they started to do some activities in the physical space, they will usually notice the closer sounds. Because their attention will be more focused on the movements they do, and they may ignore sounds from a far distance.

In this week’s reading, I found an idea that sound explicitly brings bodies together. It forces us to come out, in lyrical, antagonistic, and beautiful ways, creating connective moments and deepening the sense for both the present and the distant, the real and the mediated. Sound closely connects with our body and it can drive our body to feel its existence. Each sound we can feel is unique, It can be a pleasant sound or a disturbing one. It can be a clear sound from the near, or it also can be a fuzzy sound from a far distance. Our body can sense these layers of sounds in the same time. And I want to combine this idea with my audio work. I want to make audience use their whole body to sense sounds. Making them feel sounds in both a small space and a larger space is what I want to do in the audio work. The layers of sound will be showed in the media work as more as possible.

Listening exercises:

(1) exercise1 sounds: collision sound of surgical instruments, the sound of the collision between the surgical instruments and the metal plate, the moving sound of handcart, the sound of the monitor, the sound of doctor’s breathing, a slight sound of walking, the rubbing sound of clothes during operation, the sound of velcro, the sound of medical device packaging bag, and the sound of gauze.

(2) exercise2 sounds: the sound of the bicycle wheeling turning, friction sound between wheels and the ground, the sound of bicycle feet supporting.

I found that it was a little bit hard to name all the objects which appeared in the audio works and it was also hard to describe them. When I heard the the sound of the abdominal surgery, I cannot figure out the specific surgical instruments and I just can describe the general sounds I heard. I think the reason is that I am not familiar with these objects and the environment of abdominal surgery. And about the exercise 2, it is the sound of riding bicycle. I also can just describe the general sounds I heard, and cannot describe the specific sounds. That is because i usually sense an object by watching and hearing at the same time, and when I watch an object I may put more efforts on it so that I may miss the detailed sounds I hear.