Rant Rough Draft

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Essay #3

This essay is a response to Barry Blesser's and Linda-Ruth Salter's text entitled Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, specifically chapters 1 and 2

Aural Architecture

 My Aural Space

                 Zach Krueger                

                 To describe Aural Architecture in a sense of pure content, it means when one experiences a sound. Just a sound. By using the term "architecture," we are not describing a visual space, instead we are relinquishing our sense of vision in order to expose ourselves to purely the sound. To cite the reading, "aural architecture refers to the properties of a space that can be experienced by listening . . . An aural architect can create a space that induces such feelings as exhilaration, contemplative tranquility, heightened arousal, or harmonious and mystical connection to the cosmos" (Blesser, Salter 5). That last claim may appear to stretch the concept of aural architecture to encompass more than it does, but spacial sound does enwrap our sensory preceptors to the point of inducing such an experience. The text also impresses the importance on the application of social, cultural, and religious significance unique to different groups of people. An aural architect could place social (or anti-social) meaning to a space by feeling lonely in an enclosed jail cell, with it's cement walls in which emptiness feels perpetual. Or the echo of an empty space could even be thrilling or optimistic by suggesting the potential for growth by turning the space into a studio or office. Aural Architecture is about the objective experience that one has with sound in a specific space. The text mentions the aural space of a church or cathedral being a religious experience by letting the reverberation of sound embrace the listener as if being touched by God. An experience that I personally have with aural architecture that has dramatically shaped my consciousness to the point of feeling religious is the aural space of a stage theatre. To me, it sounds like naked imagination, the closest you could get to listening and feeling pure exposed, raw, and honest reality. Uninhibited life soaks in it's atmosphere unlike any other aural space.

Unnamed Sound Project

For the Unnamed Sound recording Project, we took a bus that went straight to downtown Milwaukee to find abstract sounds. Below is a picture of us on the bus!

Here is my first abstract recorded sound:
Unnamed Sound Recording #1
This sound is an outside recording
Click here for the aiff
Click here for the MP3

Here is my second abstract recorded sound:
Unnamed Sound Recording #2
This sound is an indoor recording
Click here for the aiff
Click here for the MP3