Sounds of the Environment

When you think of a particular place, what is evoked? For instance, if I told you to bring to mind your High-school library… what would you recall? For me, it was the distracting noise that the door made whenever someone opened it. It sounded like someone was scraping carpet with a hairbrush. But I was hardly ever there anyway. What about home? Unless your job requires travel, most of us are based somewhere. This somewhere can get so ingrained into us that nostalgic songwriters have claimed that ‘tis where the heart dwells. But what do you associate with your home? What characterizes it? I would argue a big part of a home’s character is how it sounds.  So if you asked me to think of my parent’s place up in the country, this is part of what I’d bring to mind:

And if you asked me to evoke mentally my new place of dwelling here in Melbourne, I’d instantly think of this:

Sound can have great powers of association.
Cover photography and sound by Michael Firus.