EARS. Although they seem like one of the most standard element of the human body with their not-so-fussy nature of the spontaneous one a month, behind the ear clean and conventional hole piercing structure, these little guys have an attitude that brings to bear our listening experience. Our own personalised eternal mediums housed by a subconscious power to hear or listen.

Roberts-Breslin** discusses the ‘wrap around medium’ of sound as continuous currents of physical vibrations carry through the air into our ears, choosing relevancy to our every second. This monitoring system divided into hearing or listening dictates our interactions both externally and internally, as the brain triggers the response to respond to a noise or to disregard it. This relationship with the brain is fuelled by sounds encouragement of mental imagery, as familiar voices within a crowd of screaming people sparks recognition in a friend in the audience or the sounds of the beach connoting relaxing experiences from the beaches of Italy.

Roberts-Breslin brings up sounds ability to be understood further than visual stimuli, something which at first I did not agree with. As someone that uses sight as their main sense, always having interest in the aesthetics and balance of view to shape an experience and opinion R.B’s exposing of sound’s easier nature to decipher attitude, geographic, age, mood, environment etc was an interesting point. His discussion points that sound has both a technical and aesthetic role in media through quantity, quality and direction – something i previously though relied on the techniques of imagery.

Thus, when within our practical we had a task to go and record an interview in two different styles: an informal ‘happening in field’ interview, and a formal studio based recording. We used a H2N Zoom Handy Recorder with an air muff that helps cancel out distracting background sound.

Here are the un-edited interviews from the project.

https://soundcloud.com/joss-utting/informalwav – informal

https://soundcloud.com/joss-utting/formalwav – formal

*Roberts-Breslin, Jan. 2003, ‘Sound’ in Making media : foundations of sound and image production, Focal Press, Amsterdam ; London, pp. 115-144.