Artist Statement
I woke up one morning to the gentle and calming sound of rain and I thought, I miss reading on a quiet rainy day. And that’s how my soundscape came to life. The beginning isn’t too noisy, with just the rain and the sound of the fan, but slowly, other noises begin to join in until it becomes too much for me to handle. So I seek the solace of my room -a place I always know I can count on for peace and quiet. As I enter my room, the sounds of the world melt away and all that’s left is is the gentle pelting of the raindrops and the distant chirp of birds. It’s the perfect time to read a book and immerse myself in another world.
Concept
When we were first given this project, I brainstormed for ideas and realised that most of my ideas were based on narratives. I would first picture a scene and then fill the scene with the correct sounds in my mind. The very first idea I had was to create a soundscape of waiting for a train in Japan, but I looked through my video clips from my trip to Japan and realised that the sound wasn’t really useable. Inspiration struck when I woke up to the sound of the rain. I just grabbed my laptop and immediately tried to record it.
Then I started thinking about what I liked to do in the rain and there was just two things -sleep and read. Both activities took place in my room. Silence was largely appreciated in both activities. After creating the reading segment, I thought of how I could further portray my room as the place I find solace and I decided to contrast the noisiness of the living room to the quietness of my room. So that’s what I did.
Research
Back in JC, I came across The Interrogation Chamber and the Barber Shop and I was amazed by how realistic it sounded. With my eyes closed, it felt as if I was really in the place, experiencing the situation in real life.
When this project was assigned, these two virtual soundscapes were what I first thought of. I tried to create distance and direction in my work, making sounds softer when there were further away and adjusting which side the sound is coming from based on real life.
Challenges
Firstly, I used a mic that recorded directly to my laptop, so I had quite a difficult time trying to monitor the audio with my earphones, balancing my laptop in my left hand and reaching out for the sound source with my right hand. It was especially difficult to record for longer durations of time without somewhere close-by that I could set my laptop down on.
Another challenge was that sounds sorta sound different once they’re recorded? Sometimes I’d just record sounds and then I’d play it back and it’ll be difficult to identify what exactly the sound is. WHICH IS WEIRD. But I would just re-record the sound from different positions and in different places until it sounds normal-ish. It’s still pretty hard for some sounds (especially if you’re not familiar with them) to be identified, though.
When it came to putting the soundscape together, I had a hard time overlaying the different layers of sound. Since I was trying to create distance, I had to make some sounds really soft, but then it would be impossible to hear because it sorta blends into the background sound of the rain. It was also difficult making sounds move about. Like, I could out the sound in the left or right side, but I couldn’t really make the sound move about from right to left or further or closer smoothly.