Freewrite 1

I love the big questions—life, death, right, wrong, the universe, the origins of life, searching out the point of it all and my small part within. I love literature that presses these questions—I love speculative writing that tries to guess where it’s all going. I love reading when I can lose myself in story, in an imaginary place, in deep-delving questions and complex theories and anything else that’s hard to do or understand.

Most of the time, the questions I ask seem to be connected with action—what am I supposed to do? Unlike many of my students who are still figuring out what kind of hat they will be wearing in the professional world and who they might share their lives with or where they plan to live their lives, I’m a bit more settled on those questions. That doesn’t mean things won’t change all of a sudden like they tend to do, but I’m happy with my work, it feels natural to me and like what I am supposed to be doing. I love talking about writing and reading the writing of my students—I love it when the creative energy surges and real stuff starts happening in the classroom. I love my home and my husband and my pet conure Ziggy. Normally I wouldn’t want a bird as a pet, but this one literally flew down out of the sky and landed on me one day when I was in the back yard. He was lost and after finding me, made himself comfortable by flying into our house and there he has lived with us for about 4 years now. I let him fly around most of the time when I’m at home, though sometimes he can be a bit much.

As for things I’d like to know more about—well, that’s everything. I have a passion for the new, for new ideas, new inventions, new approaches to solving problems. Nothing makes me happier than when I go online and read about some young engineer who’s figured out how to clean the oceans with a big piece of plastic—or design teams that figured out how to harvest energy from the footsteps of people walking in the London Underground. I’m fascinated by the creative way scientists have applied new technologies after they emerged—foraging robots, wireless prostheses, medicinal implants, creative ways of tackling cancer. I come from a family of medical workers and engineers and feel happy and comfortable when thinking through difficult problems or designing new solutions. It’s like sudoku for my brain....I like trying to guess where things are headed....like being a psychic for technology.

As for skills and stuff to bring to the table, I know grammar forwards, backwards, upside down and inside out. I have a pretty good vocabulary, though I have to look things up from time to time. I’ve got a good ear for flow—can usually go back and restructure things to clean up all the unnecessary words—I can distill an image into a short phrase or drag out a description of a setting so long that you feel like you’re there. My dialogue usually sounds pretty realistic, though sometimes the characters I create are a little strange. I bring visual skills to the table—been working with Photoshop for longer than most my students have been alive. My sister is a professional photographer and so she’s always giving me tips. My favorite medium is sumi ink. I like to make it drip and splatter it, create a big mess with it and then look to find the painting hidden inside. This semester, I’d like to learn more about creating sound texts—soundscapes, sound narratives, nature recordings, etc. I have a 6-track sound recorder I got my hands on this summer and I can’t wait to try and figure it out. I’ve also had a lot of fun with film editing in the past, though I wouldn’t say it’s my strong suit. I often learn a thing or two from my students when I work in film.

I just checked my word count and I was over 600, so it’s time to stop, but it does feel good to write a bit. I’ve only done some light journaling over the summer. I think having to write for an audience, like my classes, has made me a little less natural in the work—a little more cautious in what I say. Hopefully I’ll become a bit more at ease with this task as we do it more throughout the semester.

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Inquiry 1

So, the first thing I realized as I was doing this assignment was that the format I requested for students to convey the bibliographic info was not the best for the types of sources you will likely find in Science Direct or whatever database you choose from the Librarian's list. I decided just to do loosely formatted citations since all 5 of my sources were from journals. I have listed all 5 below. I have also included the authors' abstracts (which I am NOT adding to my word count) but because they do seem so absolutely useful.

Because I am planning to use sound as my medium for my final project, I decided to do some research into soundscapes. I went to the "Academic Search Complete" database and typed in "Soundscapes" in one box and then in the next line "emotion". The reason I chose this combo is that I'm really interested in the way that sounds can tell a story (sounds apart from language, I mean). When I did some preliminary research on this back before the semester started, I found some interesting explorations between sound and emotions that I was hoping to follow up on. What I found this time was that many of the articles I came across were from the realms of psychology or applied acoustics.

I also noticed a trend in the results brought up by my search: there were many medical applications of soundscape-based research. There were also articles that dealt with the environmental impact of sounds, both in suburban neighborhoods and inner-city human worlds and in the ocean. As a side note, last night when I got sucked into ​Blue Planet,​ I​ learned something interesting about dolphin—did you know that not only can they use sonar to locate fish but that the fish they locate can hear the dolphin coming for them. I’d never thought of that side of it. It got me thinking about how different sound is underwater....the medium is the message, I suppose.

So back to the article I read in detail, I’ll admit, the one I chose to analyze was ​“The Restorative potential of soundscapes: A physiological investigation.”​ I chose to work with this article because I have always been interested in this connection between space and sound and sanity. All one has to do is sit outside on a beautiful fall or spring day, hear the birds, sing, the sound of the bees going by, the wind in the trees, the distant hiss of traffic...and all of a sudden, the work truck pulls up next door and out come the weed wackers and the leaf blowers and chainsaws. Time to go inside! Well, this particular spring, there were a lot of trees getting taken down, and I noticed that after a couple hours of listening to chainsaws, even in-doors with music blasting so I could not hear it so well, I was a nervous wreck. I felt so stressed out. What could be this connection between sound and our sense of well-being? This article examines the manner in which soundscapes can affect our abilities to recover from stressful situations and it does so in a way that explores the subject scientifically, opposing these findings to subjective or narrational/perceptual descriptions of the experiences.

Note to self:​ while I have met the 500-word requirement, there is still much of interest in this article, particularly the types of sound stimuli used—the perceptions of traffic as opposed to ocean, silence, birdsong, and construction. Interestingly, BIRDSONG was the best stress reducer....

Bibliography:​

Davies William J., Mags D. Adams, Neil S. Bruce, Rebecca Cain, Angus Carlyle, Peter Cusack, Deborah A. Hall, Den I. Hume, Amy Irwin, Paul Jennings, Melissa Marselle, Christopher Plack, John Poxon. “Perception of soundscapes: An interdisciplinary approach.” ​Applied Acoustics.​February 2013, Vol. 70, Issue 2, p 224-231

This article examines sound walks and soundscapes in terms of cognitive effects including behavior of participants, information acquisition and perceived meaning. Interesting outcomes include language used to describe emotional response to soundwalks and soundscapes of “calmness” and “vibrancy”. Possible applications for soundscape assessment and design are also discussed. The most interesting part of this article, to me, is this idea of calmness and vibrancy used to describe soundscapes. I also think it might be worthwhile to go back and check out some of the application for soundscape design, keeping in mind this article was published in 2013, so the applications may already be realized in certain cases--a source of new potential leads......

Ferri, Francesca, Anna Tajuadura-Jimenez, Aleksander Valjamae, Roberta Vastano, Marcello Costantini. “Emotion-inducing approaching sounds shape the boundaries of multisensory peripersonal space.” ​NeuropsychologiaV​ olume 70, April 2015, pp 468=475.

Outlines concept of “peripersonal space” (PPS) and the manner in which perceived approaching sounds impact the boundaries of this perceived personal space. Participants were stimulated tactically on the hand while approaching sounds were synthesized. The study found that the perceived PPS was larger when the sound was threatening than when it seemed calm or neutral. I like this idea of the PPS, the peripersonal space, and how it alters in size depending on sonic stimuli. This idea of approaching sounds seems like something I could use to create a narrative.

Medvedev, Oleg, Daniel Shepherd, and Michael Hautus. ​“The restorative potential of soundscapes: A physiological investigation.”​ ​Applied Acoustics​. Sep 2015, Vol. 96, p 20-26.

This article is the one I chose to read more in depth and the one I focused on the most in this Inquiry 1 assignment. What is interesting here is the manner in which the study was able to provide empirical evidence for something i’ve suspected for quite some time: soundscapes can adversely or positively affect our health. I was surprised that the sounds of birds was considered to be one of the most relaxing and restorative sounds, second only to silence.

Ratcliffe, Eleanor, Birgitta Gatersleben 1, Paul T. Sowden. “Bird sounds and their contributions to perceived attention restoration and stress recovery.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 36 (2013) 221e228.

This article is the one that I expanded on at length in the other parts of this assignment. Basically, it examined the effects of different kinds of noise on physical recovery. It found that silence (the best) and bird songs (the second best) were among the most helpful in recovery. Construction had a negative impact. What is important here is the documented effect of sound on health and healing, which could be relevant to other environmental studies where sound might be viewed as a pollutant. The use of birdsong to promote a feeling of safety and tranquility is something that I can use when designing my own soundscapes.

Spence, Charles and Qian Janice Wang. “Wine and music (III): so what if music influences the taste of the wine?”​Flavour​12/24/2015, Vol. 4, p1-15. 15p.

An interesting article about how soundscapes “exert a crossmodal influence” over the tasting experience. In this article, the tasted substance is wine, but I wonder how it might affect other senses might be affected by soundscapes. Also, might you reverse the direction of this and say that food/wine might alter the way we experience sound? The applications of these ideas can work with the augmenting of soundscape experience with imbibables....

Experiment 1

INTRODUCTION/PREWRITING (250+ words that should come out of some informed research):

As mentioned in class, I am looking at virtual reality as my subject matter at the moment. I have previously worked with Google Cardboard to generate VR files with some success, but it was never convincingly real. You could tell you were looking at an image, even though it was stereoscopic so it did have some depth. I'm wondering if creating virtual reality with sound might not be more successful, or easy to achieve since our sound recording technology seems to be much more advanced than our video recording. For this reason, I'm going to design an experiment to see how real a soundscape can sound. I'm going to make my husband go on a walk with me and film the whole thing with a camera while I record the whole thing with my 6-track recorder. I will then mix down the tracks but I'm wondering if I will be able to capture the directional aspects of the sound recordings....or will it all sound just flat. Lots of questions here that will likely lead to other questions--playback will reveal a lot. I will be using Garage Band to Mix the tracks, but I will be playing the tracks back as probably wav files or mp3s....curious to see if there will be much depth in the recording or if the mind will sense the space where we walked through the sound-only experience. I’m wondering if I will need some sort of special headphones to do this or if it will work with just a basic set of on-ear’s......

QUESTION (something testable):

Can a walk be simulated by only using sound?

HYPOTHESIS:

I think the walk will feel very real as long as you close your eyes while you are listening to the soundscape

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE: Equipment:

For this experiment, I used the HN6 Handy recorder + 4 shotgun microphones and built-in 90-degree-situated 2-microphone combo, and one dead cat mic cover for wind interference.

Procedure:

I used a six-track recorder to record myself and my environment as I walked around the back yard. The four shotgun mics had clips on them which I was able to fasten to my wrists and ankles. I held the recorder overhead to record ambient sound. I walked in a loop around the yard and rang each of three different toned windchimes that were suspended from the backyard trees. The walk was done two different times outdoors, each time, the wind chimes rang in the same sequence of tone, largest to smallest. The recordings were to be imported into Garage Band where they would be analyzed and compressed for the purpose of posting online.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION:

While the setup went well and the yard was remarkably free of ambient noise (like leaf blowers and lawn equipment), there were problems with the files upon review. Either a mute button had been selected or there was some other problems with the audio files. Two folders of 3 files, two stereo .wav files, one for each of the pairs of barrel mics, and one stereo file for the two 90-degree situated mics. While, according to the manual, there is a way to record four tracks separately in addition to the stereo track associated with the 90-degree situated mic pair, this recording session only resulted in three tracks for each of the two rounds of recording.

CONCLUSIONS:

Unable to review the results of the recording experiment at this time. The experiment should be repeated after trouble-shooting the recording issues. It is assumed that a mute button had been engaged either during the recording phase or during playback. Once this problem is identified, the experiment should be repeated twice and the results compared and considered in terms of the virtuality of a recorded soundwalk using this sort of equipment.

Studio 1: "CREATION"

Belugas

“...there is a zero of instantaneity toward which we advance by approximation”¹- Sean Cubitt ​(MUSE)​, Liverpool, UK, 2000

(INSPIRATION)​

How are sound ​(INQUIRY) ​and time and space all linked together?(PAR 1)​ ​(QUEST 1)​ Are they woven like a piece of soft linen fabric ​(TEXT 1) (STYLE 1) (MEDIUM 1)​--pressed into a tangled pad like playschool felt? ​(TEXT 2) (STYLE 2) (MEDIUM 1) ​Are they spun like a spider’s web? ​(SPIDER) (FRAME) (STYLE 3)​ Bound with cement or glue? And in so far as the fabrics and how they individually represent each of the three terms--for they are ​time​, ​space​ and ​sound-​ -is time the breeze ​(WEATHER 1)​ that puffs those linen curtains full of life--or the blast ​(WEATHER 2) (DESTRUCT) ​that sends the spider and her web skyward into uncertainty ​(WEATHER 3)​? Perhaps sound is the thunder

CUBITT, SEAN. CYBERTIME: ONTOLOGIES OF DIGITAL PERCEPTION. SOCIETY FOR CINEMA STUDIES CHICAGO MARCH 2000 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.829.6235&rep=rep1&type=pdf

AUTHOR’S ABSTRACT

“Although much work in digital cultures alights on the concept of space as a medium for orientation in narrative productions, the structuring of time is now an urgent object of study for cybercrtitics, as indeed it has been for philosophers and social scientists (Virilio, Lash, Osborne inter alia) in recent years. The problems confronted include those of the divorce between space and time as a prioris of Kantian and subsequent philosophies, the nature of time as datum, and the social theorisation of time as construct. The paper will argue that temporality has become a raw material for digital production, as much as luminance or narrativity, and that the malleability of time has produced both new closures and new openings for creative work in new media”

(WEATHER 4)​ that rattles time’s rooftop and sends space searching under itself for a flashlight(LIGHT 1) (WEATHER 5)​.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the window as the train passes into a tunnel, darkening(LIGHT 2)​ the glass. I see my hands folder over one another like the claws of an elderly mouse(HANDS)​, politely observing ​(BODY 1)​ ​(DEMEANOR)​ a Sunday service ​(DIV) ​from the dark corner of a southern church. My hair is matted ​(TEXT 3​) from the wind and rain​ (WEATHER 5)​, my clothing dishevelled and discolored from the floodwaters ​(NARRATOR)​. I had not planned on being seen outside the house today, but here we are, the three of us, waiting to find out where we’ll wind up. All uncomfortable in our rough ​(TEXT 4) ​wet clothes, all without any other place to go.

The tunnel stretches onward. We must be going through a mountain range now. Only the amber tunnel lights​ (LIGHT 3)​ are visible, occasional textured sections of walls ​(TEXT 5)or closed doors, and the long encasements for cables and electrical wires--some caged openings that I assume are for ventilation or expulsion of toxic fumes.... ​(NARRATOR - anxious / obsessive / negative) (VENUE)​. My toes slide on the slick insides of my leather boots. If the leather dries anymore, the boots will shrink and be difficult to remove ​(STRUGGLE)​. I feel claustrophobic.

Across from me, on the metal sheeting that serves to protect the legs of the person sitting closest to the door from the bags and legs and everything else of those just entering or exiting a train is an advertisement for a local aquarium. Featured front and center is the smiling face of a beluga whale. The image takes me back to a time when I spent a great deal of my days working with marine life down in the refuge off the coast of South Carolina. We didn’t have belugas there, but we did have dolphin, who are much smaller, but similar to the beluga.

I did read a good deal about belugas in my research though at the university. Beluga whales are unique in that they have a special adaptation on their heads--called a ​melon-​ -which is filled with oil and helps them locate holes in ice using sound so they can breathe air whilst living underwater and ice. In a way, this structure--the melon--helps the whale to navigate and thus survive the space of ice-covered water in the arctic that would be otherwise uninhabitable. In doing so, the whale has articulated a metaphor for life without using any words--or sounds we human would recognize as words--collapsing time, space and sound simply through evolutionary biology. ​(LIFE)​.

The pressure in the train shifts causing the windows to pop and we emerge from the tunnel entrance, out into the open air once more. Through the window, I see​ (REACT 1)​ what looks like tundra all around--no trees at all--only scrubby grasses and small bushes. Beyond the vegetation lies the whole of the mountain range unwinding from where we passed through it in the tunnel. Our course picks up speed as we barrel over the stoney banks of a river.

The other two travellers do not even look up at the windows ​(REACT 2-3). ​I can only assume they must be sleeping as still​ (BODY 2) ​as they seem--swaying ​(BODY 3)​ only with the motion of the train. The smaller one hunches forward a bit ​(BODY 4)​, as if resting the chin on the top of a large melon of some kind ​(BODY 5)​--perhaps even the melon of a beluga whale.

There it is again, that image, the beluga whale--like a shiny​ (LIGHT 4) ​white patent leather pool toy--like a plastic thing come to life. Half orca, half dolphin, with knees that bend inside the tale--and for this reason, it has served as an explanation for what sailors really saw when they were looking out into the bright sparkle of the high seas ​(LIGHT 5)​ and imagined maidens swimming. They were not, in fact, water nymphs or mermaids--no lovely women lost in the open water--but belugas, eleven to thirteen-foot long belugas...(or hallucinations)....but they must have been sailing far north to find belugas....and while it seems strange to be talking about belugas in a narrative about​ sound a​ nd ​time​ and ​space​ and the relationship between the three of them, or the perceived separateness and connectedness of the three, what I was getting at is this idea of the melon on the beluga’s head--​a biological answer to a spatial problem achieved over time and reliant on sound​:

How do you search for holes when swimming under a layer of ice?

Apparently by losing the dorsal fin and growing a melon on your head....this evolutionary change of course took much time to happen--I’d bet thousands or even millions of years...so the melon itself is the result of much time passing in the evolutionary manner; spatially, it is connected to whale navigation but also to the space of the whale’s body--how protuberances shifted from the back to the front of the head...then there is the concept of sound in all of this, which is central, since it is the melon which enables the beluga to hear where the holes in the ice are....so back to what I was originally asking:

Sound--time--space, how are they related?

Curious, not too long ago, I did a bit of research on belugas on Youtube. I found multiple videos documenting their complex use of sound--sometimes making noises like a dolphin--clicking--sometimes chirping--sometimes even blowing raspberries--like a pool toy that’s been deflated ​(VOICE). ​They have the ability to mimic too--and have even been heard mimicking the sounds humans make....

Sound--time--space, what is it that connects them? ​(QUEST 2) ​I form this question in my mind, and feel the end of this task pull itself right to the beginning ​(PAR 2)​. I look back over the words I have laid to paper in this piece, it is a strange mix of images--some industial and mechanical like trains, others natural and magestic, like whales. I examine the language, the manner in which philosophical questions are interwoven with questions of science and art--and I think once more of Moby Dick, perhaps the greatest work of literature ever written. While I know this is a subject I will take up again, I have to stop here--so I can make one of the most difficult decisions a writer has to make--when to stop writing. ​(ART) (CHOICE)

THE END

Studio 1 Reflection on Writing Process

I struggled to get where I currently am. At first, I was really into the idea presented in my epigraph. I like this idea of advancing by approximation and what that means in terms of what I had originally planned to do with my project with sound and virtuality. But as I started following the rules, I was quickly distracted from my original idea. Let me look at it again.... Okay, it’s okay. I started skimming toward the end where I know I had given up for the night and was only trying to make the word count. I just don’t know if the beluga image works....perhaps I should spell it out a bit more at the beginning--what a beluga looks like. It’s like the friendly version of Moby Dick--like a child’s toy--or an extra huge dolphin. Anyway, I feel like I’m just babbling but I also feel like there is an interesting concept at work here--the collapsing of time that takes place when biologies evolve to solve situational problems brought on by space. There’s an interesting theoretical thread that could be worked through here.

TIME - SPACE - SOUND .... Biological evolution....perhaps a look at human anatomy? The ear and other hearing-related organs/tissues in the body. That could be interesting.

As for the story, I really need to work on the narrative part. Where is the train going? Why are they all wet and homeless? Was I just thinking too much about all the news in the Carolinas with Hurricane Florence? Does that part work? Do we need to be on a train to think about Belugas? I think it could be interesting to play off the idea of ​aquariums h​ ere. The aquarium of the train window frame--the strange bending of time that happens as you watch static things from a moving surface--collapsing of space....

Think Dead Man opening scene, think more about Moby Dick--perhaps the scene about the oil....perhaps there is something there that isn’t too incredibly sad to read about....

Questions for my audience: If I were to workshop this, I would probably be most interested in whether or not the image of the beluga came across--and if the narrative itself seemed cohesive enough for others to follow. Sometimes my first drafts are a bit too caught up in my own mind--in my own creative process--it’s like it takes another layer--or ‘finish’--a fine polish to get some of this stuff to communicate to others without sounding totally incomprehensible.

TO DO:

​___ Follow the following Rules:

​___ The creation of something parallels the creation of something else ​(PAR-1 PAR-2)

​___ A work of art must be described in detail ​(ART)

​___ A difficult choice ​(CHOICE)

​ ​___ a detailed description of a voice ​(VOICE)

​___ Make the narrative feel complete...why is this narrator obsessed with belugas?

​___ Why is everyone so unhappy? Where are they going and what will be the difficult choice that needs to be made...I’m guessing the destination will have to arrive--perhaps a dramatic Isle of Skye-esque landscape and a statue of some kind(ART)​ the voice of the sea perhaps? The sound of a beluga’s voice ​(VOICE)​? Is that cheesy? What is being simultaneously created? ​(PAR-1) (PAR-2)

A note, a few days later: ​This piece is interesting in that the narrator is riding in a train through a tunnel, thinking these thoughts about the beluga, and then re-emerging “above ground” so-to-speak at the end of the tunnel, sort of enacting the beluga’s own process of living: between breaths....