Link to sound walk:

Reflection:

I chose the site of a tree that I grew up playing under. I wanted a site in which I could stir up personal emotions from. I also wanted a place that was calm enough that I could extract sounds from elsewhere and overlay them without causing chaos. The tree I chose is near a golf course and water, the birds can be herd chirping and the wind is subtle. There is enough sound to create atmosphere and place the listener in a recognisable environment but enough negative sound to not create overwhelming chaos when I “transport” to other times/ places by adding in other sounds. The meaningful aspect of this site is the memories I hold there. I attempted to communicate this sense of nostalgia and attune the audience to it by directly addressing the sounds of a personal home video. I think it would have been more successful if I had made this comment less about only my childhood but had also directly questioned the listener about theirs. I think I made the site represent too much of my experience with it rather than the site itself, therefore taking away from the most prominent meaning of the site.

The sound walk that influenced me most was Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk. I loved how she used sonic analogies such as comparing the raw of the city to the Flapping of a dragon. I also wanted to explore loud vs quieter sounds to create texture and depth as Westerkamp seems to do. I found it strange but interesting how some sounds in this work are verbally introduced. Most of all I was influences by the macro and micro presenting of the sound scape. I also loved the concept of having a “work (that) was built to slowly rot back into the ground” Boetzkes (2010, p. 5). I took inspiration from this through allowing nature to hold so much meaning without changing its inherent qualities.

If the sound walk transports the listener to a past life of theirs, or simply reminds them of a childhood memory, I hope they feel a sense of nostalgia. I think they will see the call to actions as a way of feeling what I am describing. I hope that they will be taken through the emotions I mention and try and grasp not just what the site actually sounds like but what it feels like. During the process I discovered this was a lot more difficult to achieve. I loved how direct Westerkamp’s works are but I found mine to be a bit overly direct and made the conceptual elements of attempting to be poetic sound tacky. I wish I had been more fluid with my process and less planned as some sounds are not permanent and need to be experimented with.

 

References:

Boetzkes, A. (2010) Introduction: At the Limit of Form. In: The Ethics of Earth Art. NED – New edition. [Online]. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. pp. 1–12.

Kolber, D. (2002) Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: shifting perspectives in real world music. Organised sound : an international journal of music technology.