4D II PROJECT 2 – SOUNDSCAPE

Being A Lifesaver (please use headphones)


Artist Statement

Immediately upon hearing how interesting it was to do a sonic portrait someone, I immediately thought of my very close friends that works as a paramedic. I have always been fascinated with the different types of cases she always told me whenever I asked about her job and they never fail to surprise me. She alway claim to have “seen it all” or “the worst possible” so for this project I thought I would make the listening feel what it feels like to be here. The ambulance siren is something very familiar to us all, however there are certain sounds in the soundscape that may seem bit odd, however has a very specific meaning. That if only you are experienced in the field, would know what type of case the paramedic is handling.

Research and Concept Development

So it was very exciting to start researching on the different sounds. AND as it turns out there is a specific signal/coding that they will play to alert the alpha/ambulance that they have been assigned to handle a case immediately. The coding here is the original sound recoding from the fireboats that I was lucky enough to have my firefighter friend record for me! I have never heard this before so it was very interesting.

So upon planning out the sequence of the sounds, I decided I would give the listener a little tidbit starting of the victim so they would have a head guess what the victim did. I then decided to put a short pause before transitioning to the paramedic portion.

Upon interviewing my friend, it seems that there is a lot of talking that goes on while they are on the way to the scene of the patient, however words would give way what happened to the victim so I decided to take it out and then just leave in as much sound effects as possible.

It was so fun because of the naturally chaotic scene, to play around with the left and right panning of the soundscape! So played around and decided to edit a lot into the panning to make the listener feel more affected 🙂

Leave a Reply