User:Anita!/Special Issue 24 notes/sound map

Context

To me, sound is a very integral part of what makes a city a city. notice how loud a common place is. In a space or place that is public, communal, shared is so often loud. filled with people talking, announcements, music, sounds.

what is the importance of silence? and is absolute silence something i would like to look for? would silence make you uncomfortable? what does silence sound like?

i ask myself the importance of white / background noise. i travel on public transport and record and try to separate and pay attention to all the overwhelming auditory signals i receive. i hear the movement of the tram as a machine, starting and stopping or better being ok stand by. i hear the announcements the mechanical and cold voice makes, telling passengers where we are and where we are going. i hear the music bleeding from other peoples headphones. i hear conversations between colleagues and friends. i hear the sound of checking in and out. i hear the rain puttering. i hear someone zipping up their jacket, getting ready to leave. a sneeze. sighing. breathing. getting up. walking.

Follow sound and rhythm. List sound and rhythm.

For this special issue, i feel very inspired to work with sound in relation to the city. In prototyping we made a 'sound map' of sorts, recording the sounds of places, trying to guide people in a certain way without using words, focusing on the sounds that make a place recognizable: children playing, a wind chime, the ticking at a traffic light. Would it be possible to create a map exclusively relying on sound?

I decided to start working by using a recorder while walking around, gathering a collection of noisy walks. Listening back on what happends, writing it down and looking at the connections between the sounds. I am on a hunt for silence in the city, but have not yet been able to find it. Maybe the night is quieter, but there is always a swish of the wind, a car or bicycle passing by me, a bird flying into the canals water. Of course, residential neighborhoods, even in the city.

The outcome of these walks will be an abstract map sewn on canvas, with each stitch type representing a different sound. A sewn soundscape.

Why make it?

Making a visual sewn output to a sound map, marking the sound of routes and paths in the city of Rotterdam. Exploring graphic notation, exploring sound and relating them to practices I am already familiar with (sewing).

Workflow

Recording bikes, walks, travels around the city of Rotterdam. Translating those sounds by possibly using a script, maybe instead use Fast Fourier transform algorithm that Joseph told me about, but I'm not sure yet. With that data, assign a stitch to a sound and start mapping, first on paper (as it is less time consuming) and then on fabric.

Previous practice

My practice often references and includes elements from fashion and fabric manufacturing techniques. Very much related to my other Project That May.

Relation to a wider context

Mapping following a different sense than what we normally use as navigation (sound over sight). Interpretation of graphic scores, instead of using them to play music, using them for as a form of orientation.

Collecting data

I have started to record walks and bikes around the city in order to collect a good amount of data to create this map. I am struggling a bit to find a way to translate this sound data into a visual score that i can then sew on the tapestry. I attempted turning it into a soundgraph, but it is not really what I am looking for, so I think I will just do this 'manually' with my ears.

Another thought is to maybe, instead of using the scores, to use words instead, printing them on thick paper and then sewing them into a map, kind of what I was working on for my reader.

conversation
child voice
adult voice
bike
scooter
motorcycle
car
tram
tick tick tick
traffic light
seagull
nondescript bird 
wind
honk 
breaks
my steps 
my bike
undescript noise
ambulance
police
construction
bark

I will now screen print these onto fabric, cut them out and spread them in place to be sewn.