Reading Response 3

The article that I have chosen is called Soundwalking by Hildegard Westerkamp. This article was about what a soundwalk is and the idea of critical listening. I chose this article becasue i thought it was very interesting and pertained to class alot. I liked the idea of attenative listening that he brings up. Because after starting this class this is what ifound myself doing. When sitting in my room i found myself instead of ignoring the many sounds going on everywhere around me I actually realized howloud but interesting it is to actually listen to the surrounding environment.

In the article he does a little excersize, where he has you listen to your own body, and other things, but the point of the excersize is to make you realize all the sounds that are going on that or ignored becasue they are so regular to us. Another main point made in this article was straight up listening. When I say this I mean listening for sounds, not only hearing them but recognizing them. Their ae so many sounds that go unnoticed. The term that Westerkamp uses for this is "attenitive listening." Another main point in this artcel was the idea participating with the sounds in nature, or being in dialouge with them. Such as when natives will immatate sounds made in the wild.

I believe this article is related to a media artist becasue it talks about the ideas of sound. Sound plays a major role in a media artists career. Sound is the bees knees to a video. Without it, it lacks something very important.

Video Hardware/Software Repsonses

My experience for the Olympus camera wasn't the greatest. I felt it took very blurry pictures unless you used the flash. Comparing it to other cameras i have used, it is very bad, having very few functions and manual usage. With the strategies that i chose this camera did work to meet them. In an ideal world my camera would work differently on many different levels, such as, quality, manual functions, and record sound.
The editing software i choose to use was final cut express. This is a program that I started to use and get more familiar within the past two years. Yes i will use this program for further projects work very good and smooth.

Reading Response 2

The article that I have chosen to read is by Phillip Lopate and is title “On The Aesthetics of Urban Walking and Writing.” I chose this article to do my reading response on because it is a bout walking. I figured since we do a lot of walking on our sound walks this would be an interesting article.
The main points of this article is the art of walking and what goes on while we walk. Things such as what we notice while we walk, and how we observe things. It is also about writers and walking, and how people who write poems will maybe go on a walk and write about what they are observing while walking.
The ideas in this article have to do with the media arts in many ways. Such as when we go on our sound walks we go on “walks,” observing sounds and images while walking. While we are on these walks we are capturing these observations wether it being video, images, or sounds.

Audio Hardware/Software Responses

The process of building my microphone was a fun and cool experience. The process in which they were made was right around what i thought it was going to be. I thought getting to make our own microphones was a pretty interesting experience and a very cool thing to know how to do in the future. My microphones worked really good on my drift 1 walks they record very clear crisp sounds of all types. After messing around with the sensitivity and recording volumes it was easy to record both close ups and general ambience. My ideal micro phone set up would be multiple professional microphones with high end wind screens, and mounted to booms.
My experience with operating the minidisc recorder was kind of frustrating at first having to change it to manual record but now that I'm used to it is easy. I haven't used any other recording equipment so i have nothing to compare to. In the ideal world i would just push a button and it would record the sound i wanted at the level i wanted.
Audacity is a pretty program for being freeware and was kind of confusing at first but once i used it and found my way around then it was easy to use. i chose this software because it was the recommended software to use in the class. It worked pretty good and for now until i have a better brand of software this will be the program i use. The last thing i have to say about software is about sonic stage. It would be better if it was cross platform since lots of people are mac users and is a pretty big hassle to transfer all the tracks.

Ten Questions?

1.Is there any interesting places in the park back hidden in the woods?
2.Is there different sounds in the park at night?
3.Is there different sounds in the park during morning?
4.Is there cool animals in the park?
5.Is there cool sports noises to capture in the park?
6.Is there cool water sounds uncaptured by the river?
7.Is there more unique sounds to capture in the skatepark?
8.Is there other place other than the park to capture nature sounds?
9.Can I make cool sounds on the water fountain?
10.Is there other cool place in the city to capture sounds other than passing traffic?

Drift Assessment

First of all I would like to say I had fun doing my drift one, it was interesting, and I ended up liking some of the sounds I experienced while on my walk. The first situation that bugged me on during my drift one was finding sounds that interested me. I have multiple recordings that were just to blah, and did not use them. I liked my sounds being very crisp and clean and some of them didn't have this quality. The second thing is something that shocked me. When Glen mentioned in class that u were going to need hours of recording i was shocked, i thought to myself why am i going to need hours of recording for 5 minute or less clips. He's right though you definitely need a lot more raw recordings than you think to get five sounds that sound good.
When it comes to peaceful times during drift one there is definitely one moment that sticks out during my process. This was in Estabrook park when i went down this walking trail and just sat and listened to the ambience of the park with children playing in the distance, the rolling of skateboard wheels against the old tennis court, nature at its best with birds and crickets chirping, and the most prevalent noise of the mighty Milwaukee river flowing fast below the river banks. The second peaceful moment during my walk occurred on the same trail but in a different area. I was walking slowly while stepping on these dried out leaves. They made the most crisp crunching noise, and it was so cool to listen to them crackle, crunch, and crush so clearly and detailed.
The first thing that surprised me in my drift one experience was a sound that a captured. It was a creepy tune that i had caught while drinking some water and i did not hear it until reviewing my raw material which was very cool to me and that turned out being my favorite recording. The second thing that surprised me was the sound of the drinking fountain. During my drift one i stopped at a water fountain for a drink and was still recording while doing so not really thinking anything of it. Im glad i did though because the sound of slurping the water out of thin air turned out to be a very cool distinct sound. The third and last thing that surprised me was how noisy the world really is. There is a lot of interesting sounds to capture. They are occurring at all times. I didn't notice sounds as much as i do now i find myself listening more when I'm sitting doing homework in my room or any other time of the day.
My favorite experience is one that i have already mentioned. It was the one where the creepy music was captured in between me taking drinks at the water fountain in Estabrook park. This sound was very faint and very cool to be captured. Along with the crisp sound of drinking I captured the cool creepy sound in the distance of the park. The reaction I had to this sound was surprised, because i didn't hear the creepy sound while recording but only once i reviewed my recordings did I discover it. This sound made my Drift one a more interesting and fun event for me.

Soundwalk

In this sound walk i found it was easier to listen when you were not walking, but in a stand still position. When walking it wasn't possible to make zero sound you were always making at least a little with your feet or, your shirt brushing on you, or the wind in your ear. when i plugged my ears i was just really focused on hearing my own sounds of my body such as my breathing, heartbeat, and swallowing, then when i did unplug them everything was was really loud and more vivid. The sounds i heard when we sat there and listened were:

• Cars accelerating in front
  
• Bus acellerating in front
  
• Bus braking in front
  
• Wind in my ear
  
• Car horn front left
  
• Leaves blowing on the ground in front
  
• Trees blowing in the wind
  
• Grass Ruffling when people walk by
• Bikes coasting by
• People brushing there hands off
• Birds Chirping
• Planes flying above
• People talking
• Water Fountain behind me
• Sirens in a distance

Mostly all the sounds i could pick out but there was a distant humming that was probably just the sound of the city. the sounds in a distant were probably a mixture of mechanical sounds. Sounds that were inflicted by the wind that i heard were when the trees would blow and leaves would make noise, when the wind hit my ear, and when it blew leaves and debris across the sidewalk it made a light scraping noise. I was able to intervene the was some brick wall that i started tapping on and made a hollow sound whenever i tapped on it. I actually feel i do have a new understanding for sounds now when i'm siting in my room with my window open i just notice more sounds i find myself listing more when sitting or walking to class. I think this experience is going to help me realizer sounds more now than i would of before.