Switching Title

Experiments, Thoughts, and Connections in Sound, Transportation, and the rest of the Human Experience

[reidmay]

Here are some products a general consumer might normally buy - but these are pink!

[reidmay]

Horizontally from South to East, horizontally from East to South, and vertically from North to South. #FranconiaPark #Sunset

[reidmay]

Music sounds like emotions feel.

Leonard Meyer (paraphrased by Jonathan Sterne)

[reidmay]

Sundown at school on separate days #stockphoto #gmu

[reidmay]

[markstrandquist]

Windows From Prison featured in the NY TIMES!!!  So honored and excited.  Thanks so much to Rena Silverman and Jim Estrin for all their support and amazing work.

Leading to some really cool things. More info soon!

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/windows-without-prison-bars/

[reidmay]

World Listening Day Preparation

http://www.worldlisteningproject.org/2014/05/2014-world-listening-day-listen-to-you/#comment-74687

http://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/6_3/fenner_listening.html

Soundscape Journal:

Inside Amtrak Train - Somewhere between NJ and PA on Monday, July 14th 2014

The train is called the Silver Comet. I presume it is travelling from Manhattan to Miami.

 4:10 pm

High frequencies wash by when the train passes under freeways, and a little more roaring when a train heading in the opposite direction passes on the parallel tracks. The plastic overhead luggage racks tap intermittently. Hardware from the passenger seats squeak. The most track noise is heard at slow speeds while approaching or departing stops; "ka-thunk, ka-thunk." The horn blows for a second - two notes? A minor chord? As the train comes to a halt the breaks gently howl and die off after five seconds. The constantly running air conditioner produces a high "whish" and a low "hum." Jolly digital 3-6 note ringtones signal incoming text messages. Few passengers talk on their phones. Doors between cars and restroom doors slide open and slam shut. Conductors ask "tickets please." The train chef queries through the car "dinner reservations, dinner reservations…" Footsteps on the carpeted floor are quiet, but flip-flops slapping the heels of their owner's feet, key rings attached to belts, and loose change jingling in pant pockets is heard. The conductor's voice over the loudspeaker is distorted and void of higher and lower frequencies. He announces that the café car is now open for service, as well as what station is approaching. A low rumble is heard and felt most at high speeds, maybe 80-90 miles per hour at the moment.

4:32 pm

[reidmay]

Rumor Has It You're A Fence Sitter

N. Djokovic defeats R. Federer at Wimbledon. A clash of titans! You took a sip of your pilsner and missed it.

Lobster this, lobster that. Blueberry this, and blueberry that.

Couples surround you, putting in time, and not equivalent athletically so one feels weighed down, and the other feels guilty.

You set out on a ride and frequently chanted “Tour de France, Tour de France,” just as you learned from the German band on the drive to the hotel. German tourists are everywhere, every time you travel, you notice.

“Tour de France, Tour de France.”

You rode the trail waiting for the perfect spot to record the sound of nature, or read you book, or document your experience with some phone app. There were so many possible photo ops and birds harkening, but you didn’t let yourself because you couldn’t decide if this massive and worldwide cataloging of pre-defined human experience is a good thing or a bad thing. Such is the life of a fence sitter that your decision is to curate just enough - on important or prolific things. But how can you judge which are important or prolific? That is the magic of the pilsner – it sooths your inhibitions just enough to allow for a perfect balance of romanticism and cynicism.

You noticed that everybody is an athlete or photographer, or both. You are both, by the way. And you take pride in your utilitarian methods. You use a smartphone as a camera and as a fitness tracker. You also pride yourself for not wearing gear made for your sport and hobbies, but rather choosing clothing and tools that work well for the many activities you participate in.

The bartender served another. You saw her pulling the wrong tap handle, the one right next to the one you had before, and let the liquid composition of grain and hops flow into you glass. You thought maybe it was a stand-in tap handle because you didn’t watch her pour the first one. Anyway, it’s too late to say anything now. It isn’t really, but you can’t taste the second pint, so you decide to just be friendly and drink it.

While you were on your ride you thought of all of the different things you could write down: When you stopped to record sound at nice spot on the trail where the previous day’s rain water dripped off the surrounding rock walls, a jogger, whose ponytail bounced side-to-side with every bound, said “enjoy the day” as she passed. At least you think that’s what she said, since she was breathing heavily.

Was that all?

There was more, but that’s all the pilsner (or whatever it was) will allow you to share.

You pay your tab and the bartender says “enjoy the day.”

You hit SAVE, and maybe later POST.

[reidmay]

What you see is often not what you hear. #lakeaccotink #sound&vision

[reidmay]

I sat on the porch as I read about sound design. A nearby wind-chime did its job by sounding an alarm of a natural disturbance – an alarm which I suspected was, by my auditory measurement, of greater emittance than one that the wind from that moment could offer. My eyes reflexively lead themselves to the sounding source and found a small grey bird with its hunting spoils, a caterpillar pinched in its beak, perched atop. It balanced itself there for a moment before it pushed off into the air, cuing another jostling sparkle out of the wind-chime, and flapped into a tree in the neighboring yard.

I do not want to say something like the auditory and visual pairing was like something out of a movie, although it was my honest second mental conglomeration of the occurrence. The first reaction I had, a few seconds after the bird lifted off, was to say quietly out loud, “that was awesome,” and I truly was briefly in awe – it felt magical.

The questions that motivate the third contextual exploration, including typing it all out, are: Why did that sensory combination cause such a reaction within me? Am I unique to the conjured emotions, or would the masses react the same? Are they learned emotions or reactions from others’ descriptions or representations of “magic” from film, music, books, theater, radio, or video games; or are they deep rooted and natural from a long history of the human connection to nature? How could similar experiences happen to those in the past? Are they strictly human emotional reactions, or could a dog, or other animals, experience the same?

These are interrogations, and for now, I will leave them just as that.

[reidmay]

‘The Sound Book’ and ‘I Can Hear You Whisper’ will change the way you perceive the noises that abound

[reidmay]

A “brain stethoscope” turns seizure patients’ brainwaves into music.

[reidmay]

Sound Studies Links From J. Sterne

What is Music Technology For? http://superbon.net/?p=2592

http://www.musictechifesto.org/

Analog/Analogue: A Speculative History of the Not-Digital (DRAFT) http://culturedigitally.org/2014/05/analog-draftdigitalkeywords/#disqus_thread

http://www.english.umd.edu/SoundPlus/Program

[reidmay]

Sound of chip crunching pleasure

[reidmay]

The machine that reads our SmartTrip cards is not making the beeping noise when our cards are read upon entering the bus. This makes us each individually turn our head up toward the driver with bewilderment, when she quickly reassures us our cards were scanned, but it's just not making the sound today. Her voice will be tired by the end of the day because none of us pay attention to what she says to the passengers who board ahead of us. We have our own thoughts or smartphones to listen to. If only the bus were longer, so we could go and sit way in the back, far away enough to not hear the fundamentalists sitting in the front argue about jesus and god and satan blessings and joy and fire and brimstone.

[reidmay]

Pete Brook - Prison Photography

"As much as I want better treatment for prisoners, I don’t necessarily want to see better prisons, but rather less prisons."

"Is putting a camera into the hands of a prisoner a worthwhile project?"

"Photographs have an incredibly emotional currency inside of prisons, just from an ethnographic or anthropological position. And they are way, way prized way, way more than in free society where we’re making, sharing, creating, destroying; not even printing our images. They’re just pinging around in the digital ether."

http://windowsfromprisonsounds.weebly.com

[reidmay]

The Soundscape of Modernity: Introduction - Notes

Cultural relationship with sound: social circumstances dictate who gets to hear what. Money buys iPhones with apps, need to have unlimited data plan to stream 24/7. Access to podcasts, Netflix, Spotify, and even recording studios. (What sounds can transportation buy? Variety: loud mufflers or dead and insulated sedans with state of the art sound systems. Public transportation offers less variety: bus engines, doors opening, other passenger’s phone conversations).

Sounds as commodities are recordings, broadcasts, concerts. Have acoustic designs and technologies been geared toward emphasizing masculine qualities? Lower tones? Eliminating feminine qualities?

Sounds were reconceived as signals when electroacoustic technologies entered the market (this may be why people -including myself - are so confused about “Sound Studies”). Sounds became indistinguishable from the circuits that produced them.” (3) “They demonstrated man’s technical mastery over his physical environment” (4).