Survey

• Were you able to find places and spaces where you could really listen?

There were some places where I could listen to one thing, but there were many sounds in the background, like the street and people. I did find a quiet place for birds to come and I think that is one of the places where I could hear one thing, maybe because I was concentrating on just them because it seems that when I recorded it, it picked up the street also.

• Was it possible to move without making a sound?

If I tried really hard and slowly to not make a sound when I walked you wouldn't be able to hear, but that was really impossible with all the leaves and rain on the ground.

• What happened when you plugged your ears, and then unplugged them?

When I plugged my ears I just saw things happening but couldn't hear them, it was like everything was muted, just like when you mute your television, and then when u unplugged them it was like I unmated it. All the sounds came up at once.

• In your sound log exercise, what types of sounds were you able to hear? List them.

Birds

Voltage thingy

Basketball

Tennis court

Girls screaming

The street

People talking

Construction

Cricket

Planes

Thes dound of my bag hitting my leg

The rustling of the trees

The wind

Doors closing and opening

People breathing

• Were you able to differentiate between sounds that had a recognizable source and those sounds you could not place?

Yes, the sounds that had a recognizable source were the loudest ones. For example, the construction

• Human sounds? Mechanical sounds? Natural sounds?

Umm yah. People talking. Construction. birds

• Were you able to detect subtleties in the everpresent drone?

Ever present is two words, and I don't understand the question.

• Extremely close sounds? Sounds coming from very far away?

Yah extremely close sounds were the my bag hitting my lag and the trees and birds I was standing by. Far away sounds were people talking and the sounds of the streets in the distance.

• What kinds of wind effects were you able to detect (for example, the leaves of trees don't make sounds until they are activated by the wind)?

Exactly that. The wind making the leaves rustle and pushing the trees.

• Were you able to intervene in the urban landscape and create your own sounds by knocking on a resonant piece of metal, activating wind chimes, etc.?

Yah like opening up the sewer or manhole

• Do you feel you have a new understanding or appreciation of the sounds of our contemporary landscape/cityscape?

I have an appreciation of being able to hear.

• How do you think your soundwalk experience will affect your practice as a media artist, if at all?

I think that it will allow me to listen closer to sound more than i usually do. Usually there are so many sounds going on at once that you do not even take the time to listen to them, they are blocked out of your mind. Sound can tell you what is actually happening even if you can't see it. It adds detail. I think that this soundwalk experience will make me add more detail to my work.

Using the Hardware and Software

I thought that building my own microphone for a drift was like the weirdest thing. I was frustrated and high (due to the sauder...wrong spelling) while building it even though it was extremely interesting..ya know whatever. Making the wind resistance thing was hilarious cause it was kind of ghetto, but i felt sooooo good about myself when it was completed. Putting the mic into the mini-disc recorder and putting the headphones on my ears made me nervous...i was afraid it was not going to work and that I was going to have to start over....for the 5th time...but guess what? It had worked! woop woop! everything was suddenly amplified. It was like having extendable ears! I could hear people whispering. Will use for spying purposes.

The recorder was a little weird. It was kind of old school You had to click menu and pause and record and ya know...whatever...all that stuff. It worked very well though :) but my ideal recorder thingy would be like extra miniature so I could hide it when I spy on people. I could just hit record and thats all I would have to do. The settings would just automatically adjust.

To edit my sounds I recorded, I used Audacity. I never actually used Audacity before but I learned quick. It was actually quite fun messing around with the sounds. You could crank up the base or even add an echo. I chose this cause just did. I actually never had a lot of experience with sound editing software before and I remember hearing the name Audacity and it actually worked quite well. I will probably be using it again soon :)