Noise Intercepted Challenge #5 – The Senses
What colour is the sound of springtime? What does the sound of gridlock taste like? Feel like? This week spend some time sifting through the hazy layers of noise that make up your everyday. Explore the way these sounds affect your senses, your body, your daily experience. You have one week to discover and share your mixed-sensory noise experience.
In trying to think how my senses are affected by the coming of spring it is hard to isolate one sense. Linked to emotion, both the literal and metaphorical transformation of daylight, colours, temperature, sounds and smells combine to bring me an overall sense of lightness. Everywhere the pressure of winter reseeds and spring rejuvenates animal, plant, and city.
The soundscape I have created is a walk around my neighbourhood, at evening, night, and day. The way we hear, listen, and experience sound is influenced by many factors. To highlight the subtle changes happening around me I filtered the recordings to reveal subtleties masked by the lo-fi din of the city. This allowed me to hear things such as fish jumping for flies in the canal, bats aerodynamics, and also to measure how different birds sing and communicate in different frequency ranges. This I knew already, but it was pleasant discovery none the less. It is always interesting to experience the familiar in a new light. The soundscape of a city can be a beast to live with, but discovering that there is life beyond the din is encouraging. Maybe there is time to still reclaim some of it.
Alan Gleeson 