Working with the same group from last time, we decided to focus on creating a format of the soundscape, based around the evolution of human civilisation. In contrast to Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrete discussed in previous weeks, which utilises a very unabridged, natural approach to soundscape, we wanted to create a unique, larger-than-life sound experience. The issue with this however, is that it also needs to fit within a relatively minuscule time frame for the overly expansive theme of the entire development of humanity. We therefore decided to make a pseudo time-lapse, covering all major developments in human advancement over several thousand years, condensed into just a few minutes of audio. Looking at thematically similar projects, we noticed the strong emphasis on only the visual component, usually containing only a forgettable backing track as just a supplementary piece, despite sound being an equally integral part of human civilisation. We therefore want to put our project on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and use only audio to create our project, encouraging listeners to close their eyes to compare the effectiveness of visual vs audio time-lapses.

Aside from soundscape, we also wanted to explore the idea of spatiality in sound. For a project to feel larger-than-life while also relying solely on audio, we wanted to make the listener as immersed as possible in the experience, and feel as if they were right there in the middle of 2000 years of human growth. We therefore want to use effects such as pan and EQ to create a feeling of distance in each of our recorded samples, similar to the classwork done in week 6. We took inspiration for the addition of spatiality from sound art projects such as Seance, which are extremely effective in creating immersive, visceral atmospheres despite relying only on sound.