The Concept:
The project was inspired by the sounds and feelings I have heard and felt on the first night I’ve spent in the hotel for quarantine after landing in China. As I was overwhelmed with all the thoughts of me having to live in a foreign country without my family, and having the anxiety of not wanting to test positive for each quarantine tests, I tried to express those combination of feelings by layering mulitple recordings. Turning a memory into a soundscape was not an easy process as the term of “memory” is more close to abstract idea, and I didn’t want my soundscape to be simple and clear, but wanted it to be a bit more abstract, I used sounds such as water drops and shaking beads to represent the sound of a fast beating and anxious heart beats of mine. And to as I also wanted to add the feeling of eeriness, I added effects on some of the layers, also to add dimension to my memory soundscape.
The Process:
To list all the sounds I’ve used in my project:
- shaking beads, knocking, stovetop, water drop1, water drop2, water drop3, necklace chain, bottle cap dropping, guitar, seed cracking, vitam C tablets fizzing, shoes sweeping, turning book pages, keyboard sounds and tearing paper sound.
As I mentioned I didn’t want to recreat the actual sounds I’ve heard while staying at the hotel, I wanted to play with different sounds that didn’t actually related to my memory. However, after recording many unrelated sounds, I’ve realised all the recordings were not going well together smoothly. Therefore, to not make it too abstract, I rerecorded and added recordings of water drops, that differs from one another, to make the audiences listen and feel how quiet yet noisy the hotel was. The opening and the ending of my project was what I think the most focus went into, because I thought having an edgy start that catches people’s attention while also having tight ending was crucial. To do this, I used a guitar’s low E note and reversed it to make it sound like it is a beginning of a journey because it was the beginning of my memory. And for the ending, I used the recording of a page tearing audio to give an impression of the journey has come to an end because I’ve teared the page.
To me, the process of editing, combining and layering the audios was actually fun and the most interesting part of the whole project. I had all the sounds I’ve needed to create my memory, so I enjoyed while struggling to have to smoothest transformation of each recordings. The only challenging thing was how my drafts sounded unusual on different speakers and even headphones. But by fixing the parts that needed the volume to be lowered or boosted and adding a little touch ups, I got the result I was expecting for the final one. One of the lessons I’ve learned while editing the sounds is how small edits and touch ups can make up a huge difference in recordings and the more you spend time by adding details, the more the recordings get combined and blend to each other evenly.
The Conclusion:
I am overall very happy with my memory soundscape project, and since it had to be only 60 seconds, even if I had more time I wouldn’t have did anything because sometimes, simple is the best! But if I still had to fix something, it would be me adding up more unique audios and make the transitions more smooth.
During the presentation, it was interesting to hear how my fellow classmates have perceived my project. Some got my intention right, of how it sounded creepy and like a starting of a sci-fi film, while some said it could be about gambling because of the coin dropping sound… And as everyone observe a certain information all differently it is hard to make the meaning behind your art work clear to all. However, based on their feedbacks, I could’ve focused more on layering the recordings.
The Image:
