Category: SONIC DOING AND THINKING

7/10/2024

Having never done a sound walk before I found this experience extremely calming, your vision provides an enormous amount of stimulation that your brain is so used to, however when your vision is taken away from you, everything calms down. Your focus first moves onto your movement, at first it felt like every step I was taking I was falling off a cliff, but this soon went. Once you learn to trust your partner you’re able to shift your focus onto the sounds, this is when it becomes really interesting. At first we were in Greenwich Park and the walk became extremely peaceful and solitude, however we soon moved onto the Greenwich footpath tunnel, and as every sound zooms past you in an echo, the whole thing becomes a lot more disorientating and chaotic.

The difference in both locations was important to experience I think, the first walk was so beautiful and the sounds were very slow paced, natural and serene. But as you begin to enter a more urban environment, the whole atmosphere changes and you start to become conscious once again of your movement. The sounds of a city are also much less tranquil than nature and so this obviously makes a huge difference. Even just the sound of groups of people talking, all in different directions, different languages and at different paces, your brain is trying to keep up but very quickly becomes overwhelmed. Therefore you have to learn to shut out a lot and only focus on what is relevant to you, this is actually one thing i’ve taken away from the sound walk, to focus less on irrelevant sounds around me, as I find I can get very easily overwhelmed by them.

My work, previously to this course has been film based, working with mixed media specifically, stop motion. My practice has gone through a whole plethora of medians. Starting with drawing and painting, moving to film, and now to music and sound. Its only as of last year, January, that my interest for music sparked, I was given a Fender Strat that someone found on the side of the road in Stoke Newington, and from then on, I started teaching myself guitar, creating music my voice could accompany.

Truthfully, I have no clue of what I intend to up end doing in the future, and don’t really want to in this point of time, I enjoy exploring new practices, new techniques and I think if I had a solid idea of where I want to end up, it would prohibit me from exploring as much as I want to. However I can say I lean more towards the world of music rather than sound arts, this doesn’t mean I turn away from sound art practices, like I said I want to explore and I want to learn, thats why I chose the sound arts course. I think the music industry is slightly fucked in modern days, it runs on power and money (much like every other industry)instead of people and their work, and so I chose to study on a less musically conventional course as I didn’t want my studies to be so industry focused.

Within my current practice, I feel specifically drawn to voices, and voice patterns, how emotion shows through the voice, and so this is what I want my next portion of worked to be focused on.

My place, your place, our place.

As I look around me at the four walls that encapsulate me, I cant help but notice the slightest of sounds I have become accustomed to. Footsteps above me that once created the most annoying of sounds, that creaking noise, is now unconsciously shut out, ignored.

But it’s in my bed when I became aware once again.

Your bed is a thing of such comfort and safety, yet at the same time, frustration and inability. My bed remains a place of familiarity, unlike its surroundings. In this very moment my bed is my workspace with pens, pencils, my sketchbook and various charging leads scattered around it, however, in 4 or 5 hours it will become my slump, a place to watch tv and fall asleep. The versatility of a bed is what makes it so amazing, I can feel so unable and incompetent in my bed but also so uplifted, intimate, and at peace.

My bed once became our place, and then back to mine, and soon will be someone else’s.

Recorded in bed, very true to style.

The sounds of a bedroom are most obvious when first moving in, with the empty room and white walls that sound so easily bounces off of, an echo is present. As you move each of your items in, piece by piece, posters on walls, clothes hung up, bedding made, the sound starts to be absorbed. Your room becomes your sound.