“Forgotten Memories”– Jeeho Kim
concept
The memory I chose for this project is “my old neighbors.” I think the word concept of “neighbors” in Korea is gradually disappearing. When I was a little kid, neighbors almost meant families, we shared everything, whether it is good or bad. My parents used to come home late from their work, so my friends’ parents always took care of me. I ate dinner, did homework, and played at their house. When my parents were not busy, they took care of my friends. And we took it for granted. Also, the neighborhood alley was a playground for young kids like me at the time. We were screaming and running around, but no one complained about the noise and even parked their cars in the other place so we could play safely. I think that moment was the happiest time of my life so far, the neighbors treated others with much love and I had no worries.
But from some point, the meaning of neighbors I knew gradually changed. More people, now, think of individuals before communities and neighbors are being regarded as simply someone who lives next door. My family moved to an apartment a long time ago. I have neighbors there too, but it’s hard for me to feel the same as the neighbors in my old neighborhood. Because we don’t have any relationship with each other, even if we meet at the elevator, we don’t even say “Hi” or something like that and just look at our cell phones. Also, I can’t see kids playing in the playground together. I don’t know what has contaminated the meaning of neighbors, but it is clear that relationships between neighbors have been cut off now.
Last summer, I visited my old neighborhood. But they looked different from what I remembered. My old neighborhood places were wiped out by redevelopment for a new apartment complex. I felt that my memories were cut off when I saw the scene because the neighborhood had my happiest childhood memories. And I, somehow, felt that the meaning of neighbors nowadays has lost the hope of returning to the way it used to be back then. So I named my work “Lost Memories” and wanted to recreate my old neighborhood’s sound through the work. So I used sounds of “kids playing around”, “laughing”, “bicycles” and “ball playing.”
Process
When I first started this project, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to collect all the sounds I had planned, because we are not allowed to go outside right now due to Covid-19. But, fortunately, I was able to record most of them successfully. Most of the sounds I planned to record were from neighborhood alleyways such as kids yelling, screaming, running, laughing…etc. There are children and a dog living in the next building to my dorm, so I could get a chance to record their sounds from them when they are playing in the parking lot. Also, additional surrounding sounds such as soccer balls, bicycles, motorcycles, and birdsong could be recorded inside the dormitory complex as well.
They were all similar to the sounds I have heard when I was a kid in the neighborhood alley, and I felt very familiar with them. I repeated the sounds of kids running, laughing, and birds whispering to represent that the old neighborhood remains a peaceful and happy space for me. And the sound of knocking on the door in the second half of the work suggests that an uninvited guest called redevelopment has come to the neighborhood, and the raining sounds at the end express the sadness of not being able to go back to that time
Editing was much harder than I expected. Throughout the whole editing process, I focused on creating natural sounds as much as possible. For my goal, I deleted unnecessary parts of every recording file and put each sound in the right place, and adjusted the volumes so that one does not interfere with the others. Like the sound of birds humming and children running around, the surrounding sounds were put in the background with a low volume set, and the laughing, bicycles, and motorcycles were emphasized with a high volume set. And lastly, I was inspired by the Korean street videos on YouTube to make sounds that seemed to move three-dimensional by adjusting the left and right volumes.
conclusion
Overall, I’m satisfied with the sound I have made, but there are a few things that I can make improvements to. Since my concept is a “neighborhood alleyway”, which is a large outside space, I needed more diverse sounds for recording. But I didn’t have the opportunity to go outside and record enough sounds. And this is the first time using Adobe Audition, so I couldn’t show a good performance on editing. I would like to use more diverse sounds to express the neighborhood alleys with richer sounds if I had more time.
