In-class exercise:
At-home exercise:
For this assignment, I chose to spend an entire afternoon with my friends at Carnarvon Park, aiming to identify the myriad sounds and stimuli that this space had to offer.
Upon disembarking from the bus, we immediately noticed that the entire field was covered with geese, presumably engaged in feeding or drinking water from the accumulated surface water in the soil.
Since the geese were a prominent source of ambient noise, we decided to move to the centre of the park. There, we laid out a blanket, and I blindfolded myself to focus solely on auditory stimuli. Armed with a piece of paper, I spent 15 minutes sketching dots to represent the locations where I perceived the geese’s squawking. My friends assisted me in maintaining the orientation of my hand on the map to ensure I stayed within the lines.
Next, we turned our attention to observing various modes of transportation passing through the area, including trucks, buses, cars, and airplanes. I documented the duration and intensity of each, creating a graph in the top-right corner for reference.
Simultaneously, I noted the rumbling of my stomach, drawing parallels between its sounds and those of a motorcycle. Additionally, a nearby woodpecker caught my attention, producing cyclic patterns of sound with each strike against the tree bark.
For my wind device project, I aimed to explore the interaction between air force and various types of wood. I opted for pine and cedar as my two material choices, cutting each into different sizes to observe how the wind would move them with varying degrees of ease, resulting in a variation in the produced sound.
To be entirely transparent, it remains inconclusive whether the different types of wood caused distinct sounds. However, I did observe a higher resonance in thinner pieces compared to thicker ones. When I played the recording with my eyes closed, the resulting sound evoked memories of wood burning in a bonfire, transporting me directly back to my trips in the mountains in the UK.
I have added a sketch of the way I could analyze the direction of the wind relative to the movement of the wood stick