Gem Hell

everything, somewhere, all the time

[omniscienteye]

Soundscape in Union Square

Union Square Park is completely different at night. The music and crowds of the day are gone and filled in with small conversations everywhere. I hear so many voices. Two lovers are giggling to each other while a man screams into a phone. I don't understand his words but I can hear his rage. I hear people yelling by the street, shouting at each other and at that passing cars that honk their horns.

It rained today and the hiss of the tires on the asphalt is like a glistening sheen that blankets the area. Underneath are the people and their devices they talk into. The moan of a truck's brakes makes the bed upon which it all rests.

I can hear the frantic clicking of mice's nails on the brick sidewalk below me as they scamper around the bench. I can recognize the crinkling sound of a trash bag being blown along by the wind.

A man walks by with a radio, blasting a song I don't recognize with a pulsing synth beat and Spanish vocals. "I couldn't have done it without y'all!" He shouts to no one.

[omniscienteye]

Audio has been a big part of my life. I've been writing songs and playing in bands for over 15 years. From a young age I formed a personal connection to music with my walkman CD player and headphones. I would listen on the bus, to and from school, and in bed as I fell asleep. It was a way to enter my own little world -- a sort of precursor to the augmented reality apps of today. When I started playing guitar it was because I wanted to inhabit those worlds as fully as I could. I would play along to my favorite records and dance in my room.

Today I still seek out music that feels like it exists in an environment all its own. Frank Ocean works with very specific sound palettes that remind me of Expressionist painters, with instruments that bleed together like broad brush strokes thick with paint. Other artists like Dear Nora and Cate Le Bon orchestrate their songs with precise parts that weave in and out of each other and sound more Modernist to my ears.

The sound environments of video games fascinate me. They're almost sound installations in their own right -- sonic spaces you can move through and interact with. My favorite example of this is in Red Dead Redemption 2, a game based in a fictionalized America of 1899. The game's scope is vast and spans the fictional equivalents of the deserts of Texas, snowy Rocky Mountain peaks, the Great Plains, Southern swamps, and Eastern deciduous forests. Each region is sonically unique, featuring the songs of native birds, burbling creaks, thunderous storms and buzzing insects. Cities and towns bustle with the commotion of pedestrian chatter, horse drawn carriages, and the machinery of steel factories. I love how the sound in these environments envelopes the player. It shifts relative to their position in the environment. One can move from the nighttime barren desert with the distant howl of coyotes to the relatively chaotic streets of a fictionalized New Orleans crowded with the bells of trolleys and trains in real time. As someone who has travelled across the U.S. multiple times, the moods of the landscapes are captured in beautiful detail.

More than anything I like cohesion in sound. Audio that is thoughtfully assembled as to not reveal the seams in the patchwork. I like sound environments that feel complete and alive. I want to feel transported when I close my eyes.

[omniscienteye]

True North (2004) by Isaac Julien

A really cool film about an arctic journey. I enjoyed the three panel format which felt apt to tell the story of a disorienting trek through the unexplored corners of the earth. This multi-layered approach gave the feeling of transcending the usual temporal limits of sound and film, giving this short piece a scope that is more grand and sweeping than it may have been in a more conventional format. The sound design in particular created a feeling of space in its use of panning and was able to propel the narrative forward with voice-over narration, while also blurring the lines between literal/non-literal, source-connected/disconnected, and diegetic sounds all at once.

[omniscienteye]

Agarrando Pueblo

Agarrando Pueblo or Vampires of Poverty by Luis Ospina. A scathing critique of parasitic nature of the European Gaze and how it's hollow attempts to document global poverty amounts to little more than pornography. As the film starts, it would have you believe you are watching actual documentary footage of impoverished Colombian streets, but as it unfolds it is revealed the make-believe documentarians are the real subjects of scrutiny here. As they search the streets for "crazy" people to film, their tactics become more and more depraved until they are literally paying actors to portray poor people in order to 'show Europe what is really going on.'

I've always enjoyed the "mockumentary" genre and it's ability to use satire to unearth truths within the medium itself. Whether it's this film, Spinal Tap, or I'm Still Here, the form always seems to reveal a lack of self awareness in the industries it depicts.

[omniscienteye]

Some things I dislike

[omniscienteye]

Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC by Nan Goldin

[omniscienteye]

Untitled by Gregory Crewdson

[omniscienteye]

Ike Cole, 38 years old, Los Angeles, California, $25 by Philip-Lorca DiCorcia

[omniscienteye]

untitled by Kevin Leyman

[omniscienteye]

"Heaven" by lesbianboy

[etherealascend]

[omniscienteye]

Design Prejudice/Preference

I don't like over-complication and showiness in a design -- like a virtuosic guitar player so focused on showing off her skills she's lost the melody.

Busyness bothers me and overloads my senses.

Kitschy "Live Laugh Love" plaques.

Sponge painted walls.

/

I prefer design that reminds me of the natural world.

Simple beauty.

I like wooden furniture.

Earthy tones and bright colors like the sky.

Floral print.

I love folk music, unpolished and rugged with a heart of gold.

But not cottage core... Functional but beautiful.

Mystical but down to earth.

To the point but open to interpretation.

Poetic and scientific.

[omniscienteye]

Soundscape of a Williamsburg Boardwalk

The water of the East River falls across the sand below the boardwalk. The waves fold over themselves and slosh around, a sound that splashes and melts into a a delicate whisper. That sound, almost a hiss, swells and recedes but never quite ceases. A man on a bike screeches to a halt behind me, the friction of his brakes piercing the calm voice of the shore. A floatplane hums in the distance as it takes off from the water.

I walk under the overhang of a large building that borders the shore. Here, the sound of the waves bounces off the stone walls and reverberates, enveloping me in the surf. Someone is listening to a handheld radio and the tinny quality of small the speakers is amplified in the cavernous walkway.

Other large buildings I pass hum with large air conditioning units. A sound I can never completely get away from. Everywhere I hear people talking or watching videos on their phones. I pass a garden of bushes, their leaves rustle and tap against each other like paper wind chimes.

Walking out onto the pier I hear the trickling of water. I turn to see the back of a fisherman peeing off the side into the river. Out on the end of the pier the water sucks and slurps around the wooden poles holding us up. The wind grows stronger and howls past my ears.

Further down the boardwalk a dog barks at strangers. In a grassy alcove a lone cricket chirps until I get too close. A single loud tone sounds from across the water to signal the ferry's departure.