School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia
In Class
At Home
I took a walk down the street I live on: Scotia, and focused my attention on what different sounds were happening and where from. One thing that became very apparent was the “elevation” at which sound travels. The jet plane and the birds were two very different sounds, but both came from overhead. On the other hand, the sound of vehicle’s starting and stop I was hearing more in my chest/torso. Walking with my dog also gave me consideration for how she my hear the environment.
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
Park near home- Calm space yet when tuning in, seemed to be very noisy
Windplay
Creating a light object that can move with the wind while making a very subtle sound (the sound can only be heard when tuning in)
in class:
listening to daniel’s third song:
at home: part 1 
part 2: with tinfoil & parcment paper 
In class
At home
For this segment on windplay, I created a mini music-cup and attached four metal object of different weights to examine the clanking melodies that might erupt. Unfortunately, it was not a windy day and so sound and movement was minimal. I then decided to experiment with artificial wind stimulation- by hand and with the help of a blowdryer.
In Class:
Tuning In
I sat in Tea Swamp Park, which has a beautiful mature arbor of multiple kinds of persistent winter fruit. There are a lot of song birds that flit between the trees and the community garden, however, this site is wedged between two different construction sites and the busy traffic along 16th avenue.
I tried to draw the sounds using linework to express each instance of the chop saw, each blaring of the security alarm. the echo of the hammer and the doppler effect of the traffic beyond.
Wind Play
Across the street from Teaswamp Park, there is a building going up that has been pumping ground water out of the site continuously for six months (really). When they pulled down the church that stood across the street, the construction exposed the old piles that the original houses before the church used as foundations because this was a peat bog.
Peat bogs are particular ecologies that have a specific hydrological requirement. They both shed a lot of water and received a lot of water.
I thought a kind of aeolian pan flute might be a nice addition to the noise at Teaswamp Park. This initial sketch was exploring the relationships between the pipe depth, water levels and resonating lengths of the aeolian flute. These would be long brass tubes installed to the same depth across three typical heights of the topography of the park. When the wind is blowing and there is no birdsong to mix with the anthropogenic noise of construction and traffic, then there would be these tubes, vibrating as the wind cuts across them, in harmony with each other, and the note would be set by the level of the groundwater, celebrating the undergrounded hydrological history of the site.
This was my initial thought when sitting in the park.
Then I went home and thought about the beautiful canopy of the arbor that I drew in assignment 1. People sit under this arbour all summer long, where it is a good 10 degrees cooler than the open field.
Using trace, thread and scissors, to keep the profiles as simple as possible, i thought about two simple moves to create a spinner to hanging in the canopy of the arbor, as a marker of the airflow boundaries that keep the cool air under the canopy
Tuning in:
Wind Play:
Motion/sound video: LINK
Tuning in was taken at the beach, and while listening to the peaceful lapping of the waves on the shore I began to observe the materials around me. I decided to collect a few to test the sounds they make when they collide with each other. Ultimately, I enjoyed the blunt sound that comes from the muscle shells and decided to develop a sort of windchime around it. Rocks were collected to weigh the sculpture down so that absolute stillness can be achieved when there is no wind pressure while also allowing for subtle movement allowing for the shells to collide and make noise in the wind.
