For this assignment, I have created a soundscape, which seems to be a deviation from “what is in my bag” but I wanted to approach it in a somewhat more “abstract” way , so… hear me out (hehe).
Before continuing reading, please take a listen and see if you can piece together the “narrative” and what the soundscape is about!
This soundscape was created from found sounds that I pieced together to form a more cohesive “narrative” of my commute to work — taking the bus, transferring via Skytrain and walking to school and unlocking the door to my office.
A soundscape can be a combination of sound that forms or emerges from an immersive environment, including sounds from nature, natural elements, and sounds created by humans. It can also include the listener’s perception of sound of “how the environment is understood by those living within it” (Truax, 2001).
Most of the sounds are of the (man-made) environment; the alarm of the doors closing, the beeping at the entrance gates, the movement of the trains.
Another big majority of the sounds are made by people; incoherent conversations on the phone, squeals from children, my own humming.
There are also some sounds that I make as I take out and use the things I have in my bag; unzipping my bag to take out my wallet, my headphones booting up, fumbling for my keys.
Designs of Meaning
Immediately, I introduce the ‘design” of the soundscape — a commute on public transportation. Now knowing the context of this immersive experience, one can assemble the “order of discourse” and the conventions that come with using public transportation, which can be culturally dependent.
This can be inferred through the alarm that sound as the doors are about to close on the bus, a mumbled “sorry” as people try to squeeze onboard, and the beeping of the fare card.
It is further reinforced by the announcements on the train. One can know a lot about the people, culture and history through the languages spoken over the announcement system. In Vancouver, the Skytrain announcements are in English only. In Taipei, the MRT announcements are in Mandarin, English, Taiwanese and Hakka. On my recent trip to San Francisco, the MUNI announcements included English, Spanish, Cantonese and Tagalog, which I found really interesting.
I am unsure where the “designing” and “redesigning” processes take part in this entire experience… I hope that through engaging in the New London Group paper and re-contextualization of What’s In My Bag Task, the process is on its way!
On Changing Public and Private Lives
I wanted to do a soundscape of public transit, as I believe it is a very embodied way of experiencing the socio-cultural-anthropological landscape of an environment. One can catch a glimpse of an individual’s private life in this public space, which I find very fascinating
If each individual is considered a “vessel” (or “bag” in this case), then the subcultural differences –gender, ethnicity, generation, sexual orientation, etc. — can be considered the “contents” that they carry with them, as they traverse through the multiple lifeworlds they are members of, in which their identities are in complex relation to each other.
This ties into the necessity of having skills to navigate through the cultural and linguistically diverse civic pluralism that resulted along with the shift of global geopolitics, especially when it comes to regional, ethnic, class-based dialects, cross-cultural discourses and code-switching amongst them (The New London Group, 1996)
The concept of civic pluralism mentioned in the paper really resonated with me, especially seeing that in the context of public transit.
Civic pluralism changes the nature of civic spaces, and with the changed meaning of civic spaces, everything changes, from the broad content of public rights and responsibilities to institutional and curricular details of literacy pedagogy.
Public transit in some ways depicts civic pluralism on a smaller scale, and it is apparent how diverse and divergent the boundaries between public and private are. It also blurs the boundaries between the multiple lifeworld each individuals carry along with them on their journey, which creates more autonomy and space for them to move more transiently between them.
References
Soundscape (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved July 6, 2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundscape
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
Truax, Barry (2001). Acoustic Communication. Ablex Publishing Corporation. pp. 11. ISBN 9781567505375.