My Movie 1.mp4

Natalie Acopian and I worked on this project together. The hardest part of this assignment was determining what we wanted to record. We had different ideas at certain times, but after little while we knew which sounds to record. I took a Sound Theory class last semester, so I had some sort of idea how we wanted to go about this.

For the bad interview, the interview recording isn’t that bad, but the fact it was recorded on an iPhone makes it bad.

The non-human sound is the sound of the insects, the wind, and walking outside.

The human sound is girls in our sorority talking after a meeting.

The made world sound is the sound of an air conditioner.

Enjoy!

For our Making (Good) sound Assignment interview portion, Mekhi Bryant and I decided to interview each other on a iphone using the voice memo app on the phone. Listening to the interview you will notice how there is a lot of static when we speak into the microphone, We know that when conducting any type of audio recording, the best quality of audio (the one with minimum to no static) is greatly preferred.

For our bad interview sound, Ricky & I decided to interfere with how well we could hear him. I stood distance apart from him, making it difficult to hear him at an adequate volume. We also decided to show how other noises in the background, or accidentally touching the mic can mess with the sound as well.

Our sound of the human world was made from a concert of live singing that happened on September 15th.

Our sound of the non human world was captured on campus near our dormitory, it was the sound of crickets at night time.

Our sound of the man made world was a microwave.

Monday’s class was very interesting in many different aspects. I really appreciated the fact that there was someone who already took this course, because the whole class was able to learn a lot of insightful information from him. After watching one of his documentaries, I realized how much all of us can benefit from this course. He is very talented and all of us can learn from him.

I also really enjoyed the activity where all of us put the offenses in order. It was nice to collaborate with other people to see what their opinion on these topics were. It was interesting to look at other group’s work and to compare to their opinions to my own.

For this assignment, we didn’t have to travel far to record each sound we needed. We stayed mainly in our school’s little hub called “campus square” and started by first recording two students having an intense study session for their biology exam. We then crossed the street to our local coffee shop, Saxby’s, and recording a frappacino being made for our “made sound.” We struggled a little with finding a non-human sound, and were excited when a dog came by because we thought this would be a good opportunity, however the dog was very quiet and “rarely barks,” according to the owner. We sat down and as the wind picked up, we started to record the sound of the trees and bushes rustling together; this became our non-human sound clip.

For the bad interview, we went and stood in front of a fountain with other people around, and, using a phone to record, we stood a few feet away from each other, causing the audio to sound distant and overpowered by the background noise.

This was an interesting project to do, and we enjoyed that it forced us to use equipment we hadn’t before and explore different aspects of our everyday lives and campus that we normally wouldn’t.

Before we started recording, we had the issue of not having our batteries charged for the tascam. Thus, we had to reschedule to meet the next day. When we reconvened, the batteries were charged; however, it would seem that there was never an issue with the batteries not being charged, but rather there was an issue with the tascam. We were not able to figure out why the tascam wasn’t turning on. As an alternative, we used the voice recorder to do the assignment. For the bad interview, we used an iPhone as a recorder and recorded the interview in a disruptive area, as well as held the phone far away from the subjects. For the human world, we went with recording actual human life happening as we recorded an active event (a barbecue/party). The non-human world was tricky to figure out, but we decided to create the sound of stomping on leaves. Finally, for the made world, we recorded a washing machine in progress as it spun through its cycle.

1.Bad Audio

2. Human World

3. Made World

4. Non-Human World

The hardest part about this project was actually deciding which sounds we wanted to record. We wanted to be creative but also record sounds that were pleasing to listen to.  After sharing different ideas such as people talking in dining halls, fingers tapping on keyboards, or papers ruffling in the library, it became very evident that it was hard to separate human sounds from the “made-world” as there is a lot of overlap. Is typing on a keyboard a human sound or a made sound? We are at a point in society in which our brain has literally mapped our cell phones to our body in our proprioception input, yet they are still technically part of the “made-world” and no the “human world”.  Ditching any idea that could have fit into multiple categories, my group headed towards Emily’s car and decided to play around with the many sounds it made to count as the “made-world”. This turned out to be our most successful audio as there was a lot we could do with the car, from turning the keys in the ignition, to the windshield wipers, to using the turn signals.

After that, we decided to take an adventure down behind the FAMS building near the Arts Trail to capture what we could easily distinguish–sounds from the living, non-human world. We recorded the water rushing down the dam, as well as the sound of large rocks being thrown in, however the water was so loud that even with a smaller input on the Zoom recorder, our audio has the sense of just being loud white noise. The living human-world was a bit harder, but we ultimately decided to record Kenzie running with heavy breathing overlayed on top since breathing and movement are two of the basic features of life that humans (and lots of other animals!) can do.

It was interesting to compare our good audio to the “bad quality” version taken on my phone while driving up the hill. The wind from the air was extremely loud and overpowering and it is clear to see the difference that using the audio recorders makes!

Overall, it was a really fun project and made us all really think about the importance of audio and all the types of sounds out there in the world.
Kenzie Corbin, Emily Ramirez, and Luke Madronal.

We encountered a struggle early on in our making process: our recorder’s batteries somehow died. One of our brilliant solutions to this was replacing the rechargeable batteries, before realizing that wouldn’t work. (Anna dug through the trash to reclaim the old ones.) We returned to the sound office and exchanged it for a new one, then began our journey.
First, we created bad audio. We used a fan as background interference noise while recording a mock interview question on a phone audio app, and then explained this clip.
Next we went down the hill and recorded a few different things that we thought were possibilities for each of the categories (non-human, human, and made.) Downtown Easton seemed like a good idea for thoughtful sound recordings. We recorded the Bushkill, the dam on the Bushkill, and various sounds of cars driving past. One of the car recordings became our Made World. We went to the Easton Public Market for dinner and recorded sounds as we walked around there; one of these clips became our Human World. Finding audio to record for the Human World and Made World was easy; the great challenge was the Non-Human. This was disturbing. We knew Easton was a city environment, but we couldn’t find something ‘natural’ to record. We kept remarking on this as we walked, frustrated that any recording we made was contaminated with cars. Even the sound of the Bushkill was unnatural, dammed by humanity.
We were slightly dejectedly walking back up the hill to try to find something natural on campus, when we heard the sound of crickets. We stopped here, recording their chirping; that became our Non-Human World.