Sound walk/ Acoustic ecology

What is a sound walk you ask? It is a way of listening to what is going on in your environment by means of a walk, wander free range roam or perhaps, a designated and mapped route.
Of course it comes from Acoustic Ecology and to me, this is as fascinating as a research project can be. I am interested in how we relate to sounds in our environment, how we fill spaces with sounds and why.
Some of us are impervious to noise and others are extremely sensitive to it, personally I am acutely sensitive to environmental sounds and am curious to learn what others think. According to Time magazine, here are the top ten most annoying sounds of all time, do you have any others? Leave yours in the comments.


For the interests of the research I will subject myself to this test that I can only assume will be excruciating. Results are as follows:

1..  Vuvuzela.... I had to pause it almost immediately, and then a few more times.. and then I muted it..that is horrible. ( also, whoever invented this, you have a lot to answer to mate) In all I probably only stood it for a total of 10 seconds

2 .  Emergency broadcast system.... not as hideous as I expected, pretty shrill and piercing but oddly not the worst.

3. Gilbert Gottfired... oh my goodness, no man, no .. stop talking now. I  got through the introduction, probably 4 seconds and no, mute.

4.  Nails on a chalkboard.... ok so it's a Freddy Kruger impersonator and we were expecting it but still, this is probably the most universally agreed upon "worst sound ever" .. it started scratching, I lasted a sum total of 1 second, maybe 2... no, it was 1 ( that said this was a pretty rubbish example of  the Worst Sound Ever

5. Car alarm... in my top 3 sounds from hell, it always make my head feel like it's going to explode and completely removes the ability for my brain to do anything else but get really angry and stressed... 3 seconds... enough. but then i played it again, like an idiot... I think it is the rapid fire repetition that does it and it simply floods the brain.

6. Dial up modem.. I don't actually mind this, perhaps it was so ubiquitous back in the day that it signified digital conectedness and the exciting dawn of the internet, or something! yeah, no worries on that one.

7. Snoring... ok, another one in my top 3... I HATE snoring, don't even need to listen to the clip to know this.... grrr.....it makes me ad because while the offending auditory assailant is sleeping peacefully, I most certainly am not.. also, it sounds awful. ( the poor dude in the clip has a serious problem though and needs to lie on his side and maybe... I dunno, get a bed?)

8. Cicadas.... a bit like a car alarm I guess but not really that bad, maybe it is just artificial ( sorry snorers) sounds that bother me the most... that said the cicadas could do with toning it down a bit...quite selfish of them.

9.  Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber.... Quite bloody annoying yes, but then again I find Old Jim pretty bloody irritating anyway... what is that noise he is making all about?Just do not be that guy Jim, please.


In conclusion.....there is surely a test out there with far more irritating noises than this, I shall not be seeking it out... that said.... AARGGHH....

You Are Hear

My current project is called "You Are Hear"

It will be a research project mainly and I am setting out to find and record all sorts of information about places I visit, primarily focusing on  field recordings and analysis of sound but also collecting found objects and other observations, it should lead to some interesting new ideas.

Please visit: for all posts and updates:  http://youarehearav.blogspot.co.uk/

Psychogeography

So as it turns out, while researching the sound and silence ideas and looking into how I can work with this idea, I would like to take it in the direction of Psychogeography.

PsychoGeography: “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”
Guy Debord  Link to source.

I have always been interested in how we use and inhabit the environments we are in, share them with others and view them from our own perspectives so this may be a very interesting project and, of course I have NO idea where it will lead.

One thing I do know is that I want to look at the spaces we inhabit in terms of sound, what is naturally there, what we consciously or subconsciously put there and what we can put there, this sort of idea is interesting in that there can be a visual as well as auditory response to the space, I would like to look into this.

Dec 17th

I have been reading and looking for ways to figure out how to approach this so that I don't leave out the initial concept of sound and allow  it to move on to something else so I concluded that embarking on a series of soundwalks would be the best way forward. I will record these in a  field notes.

a field notes page I made up for the book

and record and create sounds depending on the situation, I'd like to archive the sounds and have them easily accessible so I am going to try and find a way to create a mobile ( app maybe) way to let people access this. The idea is to create a bound book with all the journal pages, this will be not just the sound ones but a more general explorers journal as well.

field notes page

I will try to record everything, keep an archive of found objects, photos and observations and culminate this with the book, the objects and a map design that I am yet to work out. It will be very interesting to see how  all this information comes together. Essentially, this is the type of thing I am looking at.