Sonic ethnography—soundwalk activity:
Use an audio recording device as you move through, or in and out of, discrete spaces; continue recording as you pass from one location to another. Rather than trying to capture any representative sound of one place, this technique works to disclose more movements through spaces, offering a more dynamic perception.
Link Auditory and Spatial data:
Supplement the audio data with a map and indicate the time of the recording on the location in which you heard it. That way as you play back the recording you can follow along the labeled map and as you look at the map, you can hear different places and intersections.
What does this add to your subsequent reflections about the place; how does the combined resource of the recording and labeled map help you remember or imagine different aspects of the field?
Reflective Writing:
Consider and try to write about the dynamics that the recording lends which are difficult or impossible to grasp entirely in writing. Without trying to explain them, can you describe your observations as they come to you through an open-ended, exploratory prose? What is surprising, ambiguous? What do you feel uncertain or ambivalent about? What do these observational and writing techniques afford to your final account?
In listening to the recording and following the map, can you remember other visual or tactile elements? Describe them.
Juxtaposition:
Juxtapose audio by re-mixing and layering recordings—sounds that are in relatively close proximity—notice how different atmospheres are created by sounds that are otherwise in the same location. Consider the exchanges between and significance of multiple realities unfolding in a shared space. What noises are dominant, filtered, eclipsed (ie. traffic vs the inside of your car vs the inside of a bus/coffee shop, street, commercial kitchen).
From a partner’s layered recording, indicate the sounds you hear in the order that you become aware of them. Then, pick a subversive sound and amplify it. What made you choose it? How does it get drowned out in other noise? What is the significance of amplifying it? How does this shift of sounds fundamentally change the feel or meaning of the place?
Materiality of Sound—Spatial Perception:
What does it mean to see through sound (like a whale!): Translate and transform sound frequencies or decibels into a visual depiction (abstract or otherwise). Take a visual model of sound from a recording (through frequencies) and create a visual model. Through mapping/echolocation, heat, or light/sound frequencies.
Consider what it means to feel the materiality of sound, what does this lend to your perception of a space? Is it claustrophobic, chaotic, insulated, or expansive, open, or echoing?