After having practiced both sonic and visual/other sensory observation in class, I felt pretty well equipped heading into this assignment. I experimented with a few different spaces, immersing myself in the soundscape of a train ride into the city which gave me some interesting insights into the notion of personal space, how we conduct ourselves on the train, the sound of movement and how the amount of people on a train affects our comfort within the space. I also spent time observing in coffee shops, where I noticed the specific sounds of someone assuming a role. In this case it was the hurried, precise sounds of the barista as they prepared all of the orders, which sounded quite different to how someone might if they were preparing one for themselves in the comfort of their own home, or to how someone would likely sound with much less experience.
Eventually I attempted a sonic observation session in the morning at a friend’s studio apartment on the upper level. I sat staring out an open window (fixing my visual gaze on the trees outside helped me broadly ground my sensory focus which is something I found interesting and will continue to experiment with), having not long woken up, and began documenting what I heard. I took note of the sounds of routine in the morning, particularly in the chirps of the birds from above and the scheduled bin collection in the form of heavy, mechanical sounds from below. These polarising sounds formed a sort of traditional heaven/hell dichotomy in my mind and began to play off each other in quite a musical way, with the polyrhythms of the different bird calls forming a melody that sat atop the grinding industrial percussion of the garbage truck below. The morning commuter traffic that I could hear distantly coming from Burke St provided a calming ambient backdrop to the rhythmic interplay in focus and established a distance and direction to the soundscape. I realised there was a linearity in the way I was noticing these sounds and forming this narrative, with each new sound appearing like a new musical element joining the composition. Eventually some sounds from within the room grabbed my attention: a phone notification chime, the clinking of a spoon against a bowl, and ultimately the hungry rumbling of my stomach, each sound gradually sucking my attention away from the soundscape that was expanding out into the world and drawing me back towards my body and own perspective.
The visual site that I had the most profound observational experience within was during the class in which we went to the state library reading room. In that space, I was struck by the arrangement of the space and how it could create a communal sense of privacy, with everybody utilising the space and each other’s involvement in the space to commit to their own personal studious pursuits. I found that I was drawn to events that occurred within the frames that decorated the perimeter of the room, and the significance they gave to those events that could be seen within them – for instance, I found that arched frames gave an almost ceremonious feel to a mother holding their child up to marvel at the majesty of the room (it was a true Simba moment).
I found the feedback in class to be really interesting and motivating, a lot of suggestions for investigations were offered as well as genuine interest and excitement across the board. The feedback I received for my presentation noted the intersection of different sounds across time – in this case it was the sound of the phone chime, a sound generated in the past, colliding with the present sound of actual chirping birds – as something with potential for further experimentation. Robbie also noted the conditioning of historical narratives as potential contaminants for observation, with the notion of heaven and hell weaving its way into my observation of the interaction between morning birds and garbage trucks.
Every single presentation was full of fruitful points of discussion, and I felt that the ideas all dovetailed into one another pretty seamlessly. I was particularly intrigued by the notion of urgency in sound and how that might factor into an individual perspective and the experience of focus. The idea that a sound, although familiar to us, can take on a different identity through the imagination also grabbed me, with the potential for the mind to form a narrative out of a collection of sounds being something I am also interested in experimenting with (with the aural geographical work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Seeking Ursound reading staying with me as a big point of inspiration). I also found the idea that a person can completely reanimate a space to be full of investigative potential, with perception and perspective influencing not only the seer’s experience but also those around them.
At this stage I feel that sonic environments are intriguing me most, although I am open to whatever we continue to experiment with. I’m looking forward to recording space and seeing how recorded artefacts can affect our memory of the space and potentially future experiences of those spaces.
VISUAL SITE (Top Left)-1lqk2qn
SOUND SITE (Lower Left)-212c6t5
SOUND SITE (Lower Right)-22jhqci
SOUND SITE (Top Right)-297uf6m
VISUAL SITE (Lower Right)-1oqgv9c