Sounds of the City I
Let’s walk together through a great modern capital, with the ear more attentive than the eye, and we will vary the pleasures of our sensibilities by distinguishing among the gurglings of water, air and gas inside metallic pipes, the rumblings and rattlings of engines breathing with obvious animal spirits, the rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of mechanical saws, the loud jumping of trolleys on their rails, the snapping of whips, the whipping of flags. We will have fun imagining our orchestration of department stores’ sliding doors, the hubbub of the crowds, the different roars of railroad stations, iron foundries, textile mills, printing houses, power plants and subways. – Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noise
Influenced by Luigi Russolo’s Art of Noise manifesto and the Awakening of the City music composition, our class will collect sounds of the urban environment. These sounds might include traffic, people talking, construction, a water fountain, children playing, birds singing, etc. Record sounds that you believe capture the quality of life in Singapore. Sounds that are of particular interest to you, that perhaps have special meaning, such as a park you like to walk in, the student canteen where you have lunch everyday, etc.
We are interested specifically in ambient sounds, the sound of everyday life, the sounds we might ignore, but that now we are paying attention to, and in fact, using to construct a sound art piece.
Here are the following steps:
- Record from your phone using a recording app such as Voice Memo on the iPhone. Use an equivalent app if you have an Android phone.
- Record a few sounds of approximately 1 or 2 minutes in duration. Keep them short.
- Take a photograph of the location where you recorded the sound. Take one photo for each sound. Share the photo to your Dropbox folder called sounds.
- Upload each sound and photo to your Dropbox folder called “Sounds.” In Share, click on “More” to activate Dropbox for your Memo and Camera apps.
- Then upload your sounds and photos to Soundcloud. The photo should be the corresponding visual icon for each sound. Give your sound a name and indicate the location where it was recorded.
Next week we will use our sounds in Max/MSP/Jitter to create a new audio-visual composition.
Sounds of the City II
We will continue this project for another week. Record additional found sounds, at least four, exploring specific textures or qualities, which we will explore further in class. These textures might include: noisy, natural, artificial, percussive, musical, elemental, rough, pure, wild, weather, social, etc. Record the results of two short mixes in your Max patch and upload to Soundcloud. We will share them in class next week.
Continue working on your patch, try out different ways to route your sounds through the various effects and mixers. Explore and experiment, there are many ways to shape your composition and at this point it is subjective and according to your own ears and imagination.