Rough Unnamed Sound

Click here my rough version of my Unnamed Sound recording

Field Recording -- Drift

The Theme: Escaping The City

The theme for my Drift was the idea of escaping the city. I wanted to replicate the feeling that I get living near a city as big as Milwaukee, and the constant ambient noise that is always lingering somewhere in the background, never allowing total silence to exist. I wanted to find locations where the industrial sounds and car sounds from the city are just lingering in the background with nature at the forefront, conveying the idea that you can never really escape it. I wanted to focus on the factory that is across the river from Riverview. The beeping and wailing sounds of the construction there are always making their way to my window, so frequently that at times they blend into the environment so well I forget they're there.


1. Drift Sound #1 "Bells" 6:45pm

Click  here for the aiff.
Click  here for the mp3.

Location:
Along the river that flows between Riverview and Cambridge
Map for Sound 1:"Bells"


2. Drift Sound #2 "Am I Gonna Be On Audio?" 5:00pm

Click here for the aiff.
Click here for the mp3.

Location:
Along the river that flow between Riverview and Cambridge in the opposite direction as "Bells"
Map for Sound 2: "Am I Gonna Be On Audio?"


3. Drift Sound #3 "The Geese" 11:07pm


Click here for the aiff.
Click here for the mp3.

Location:
Across the parking lot from Pick n' Save by Riverview, down the stairs and across the bridge
Map for Sound 3: "The Geese"

Essay #2

The "Anti-Tourist" 

Zach Krueger

               What an anti-tourist isn't is someone who has a clear idea of where they're going or what they're going to experience. They are completely lacking of any kind of expectation as to what is held in store for them because they are completely open in a way a "tourist" is not. According to Kalder, a tourist is someone who has a specific idea of where they wish to visit when traveling. As if across continents and oceans, all there is to see is what you read in travel books. It's planned content. It's a planned experience to which Kalder feels a traveler can only gain a limited sense of culture from. For the most part, a tourist will keep their own sense of identity and sensibility of living while being among many members of their own ethnicity in a place their already somewhat familiar with. The question an "anti-tourist" might ask themselves is this; when has anything in life that has ever been truly worth it been something that met their expectations? An "anti-tourist" is someone who would start at a location, and simply exist in it. Instead of having their own schedules form their experience and bend the world to their plans, they allow the world to shape their schedules and their stories. Something an "anti-tourist" learns is that the best stories come from the unknown. They're something that you need to "drift" into, in which you may find a people living in the corners of the world that history forgot, or the last true pagans of Europe. Or hidden sounds you didn't know were there because you weren't looking for them.  

Field Recording -- Drift

Drift Strategy

My Drift Strategy is to start at a specific point of my choosing. I'm going to be bringing my iPod with a preset playlist of all my music to put on shuffle. Depending on the overall feeling of the song, I will either keep going straight, turn left, or turn right. If the randomly selected song on shuffle is a "sad song," I will turn left and continue walking. If it is an "upbeat," or "happy" song, I will turn right. If I can't easily determine the general feeling of the song,  I will simply continue walking straight. If I end up walking through wooded areas and there isn't a definite right or left, I will simply do my best to follow a path that is as rightward or leftward as possible.

This is the Rough Sound recording I captured to present for Group B
Here is the link to the Rough Sound

116 Essay #1

Essay #1

The Rural Landscape

Zach Krueger

1. Schafer makes the distinction of hi-fi versus lo-fi by comparing the country-side to a modern city. He describes hi-fi as having a clearly defined depth of sound. Because of its low level of ambient noise, there is a spatial environment in which  foreground and background can coexist. Schafer conveys an interesting sense of reverence for the sound environment for hi-fi areas and laments the lack of the potential of comprehensive listening in low-fi areas. In my own experience, I can confirm that in busy areas I tend to retreat into my own thoughts and block out the wall of lo-fi sound. However, while on a walk with my dog in an open hi-fi area for example, it's easy to let the layers of sound wrap itself around you.

2. Something as trivial as churning butter can become a nostalgic mark in someone's memory, evident from the sentiments described from Schafer. He goes in detail to paint the picture of his childhood living on a farm, as if he stepped into the soundscape of his past and listened again for the first time, "The hand-operated pump . . . now snaps into memory as a sound mark of my youth" (Schafer 48). He describes this sound as having a texture and a personality that still holds a place somewhere in his seldom touched subconscious. There is one specific sound that I can recollect in a similar way. I don't remember specifically where I might have been, but if I delve deep enough into my childhood I can hear the elusive sound of a distant train somewhere over the horizon. There's something nostalgic about the way it hangs suspended in the wide open space it inhabits in my memory. When I hear it again now, it still makes me stop and listen.