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Inquiry 4

List of 10 links connection to sound that advanced my inquiry project

250 words on what I discovered in the process: first off, Sara Maitland is quite the character. It's strange to have read her book and to have imagined her voice in such a way only to hear her read her own words so differently than I expected. I really thought the sound of her writing was quite beautiful until I heard her read it. I wondered if it wasn't nerves on her part--the lack of a good producer handling the footage--or something else. I kept looking and found a few other videos with her. The one Wild Places was fascinating because it brought to mind so many things from the wild places of my youth. I grew up in the Jefferson National Forest, wrote a book about it even. It was interesting to read A Book of Silence as the reflection it was on her own stomping grounds....as for other videos, I included the rain and the fire log which are so comforting in the cold office spaces of late fall. I located some interesting examples of sound-focused art--oh, and I brought Kate Bush into the mix with her song "Experiment IV". This song was written in 1986 and has a bit of a prophetic feel if one considers the nature of media like Youtube, etc. in terms of the sounds the provide and produce. I used to listen to Kate Bush ages ago when I was in college--it's strange to re-encounter her now. I first listened to the song, then found the lyrics page where I was able to get a better sense of the narrative at work--then I found the music video which was a sort of dramatic reenactment of the song's narrative. This reiteration through different media brought a lot of subtleties to light. I feel like this exercise in using sound to explore or press the inquiry did force me to go a bit subtler--into the realms of music, of artistic installation, but also into the differences between the written word and the read word--or the freely spoken word. Sound plays into each experience but in very different ways. Perhaps the word at stake today is "Affect". or even "Affectation". .....

To consider further:

William Gibson. Pattern Recognition. See concept of subtle edits as propaganda.

CONNECTED TEXT: Peter Reich. A Book of Dreams. 1989.

Maitland reading from A Book of Silence, unedited, raw, unproduced....

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Experiment IV

250 words explaining how the project was moved forward as a result of what I did:

This passage comes from Maitland's book--page 275 perhaps? I have it dog-eared. I read the passage aloud several times, sometimes while playing back myself reading the passage aloud, many layers at a time. The effect is that the passage becomes a sonic event, one of echoes and feigned distances. Upon playback and after examining the epigraph I chose for Studio 4, the ghost story, I realized that there is another ghost present in all of this. There is a deeply felt resentment toward the destruction of life forms and the disturbing of the natural way. Machines, like leaf blowers, chippers, mulchers, jackhammers, frontloaders, etc. etc., they are destructive by design. I watched a beautiful tree taken down today--in its full most vibrant, yellow glory. They took it down in pieces and fed it to the chipper. It took all day. I played Charlie Parker to deaden the sound of the destruction.

I am aware that there are many humans who do not feel a connection to nature. When they see a tree, they see something they might use one day to make a table or a chair--if it blocks their view of the sun, they have no hesitation to order it cut down. I am not of this mentality. Call it logic, call it religion, call it sentiment or just a general hunch, but I see these life forms--and I see the lives that live in them. It would be a better world if people mourned the trees that they cut down--honored their often long lifespans, acknowledged their value as a home and food and resource to species other than our own.

Perhaps this is how this narrative moves my inquiry forward.

“Once upon a time the forest went on for ever. It is almost impossible to imagine now how continuous that forest was.” -Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence

I found my epigraph for starters, but READ IT.

I think it is this image of the forest that stands out to me the most and which is why I seek shelter from the endless barrage of destructive gardening machinery that surrounds me and my workspace. I grew up in the forest, wrote a book about it in fact, didn't even wear shoes, even in the winter. We lived on the edge of the Jefferson National Forest and as a child, that forest went on forever. Since my childhood, however, I have flown over that same forest in a plane, examined it on Google Earth or on a map--it doesn't go on forever; in fact it doesn't go on far at all and is just really one tiniest fraction of the forest that used to be there. The forests are disappearing and most people do not care. The forests....perhaps this is something that this project is about and something that I could consider with the Final Project...........

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Studio 4

REFLECTION:

I had no plan for where I was going to take this piece and when I sat down to write it, I figured I would just let the rules sort of dictate where my story would go. As I mentioned in the writing, I have done this assignment before. The rules were probably a little different (I try to change them) but some of the key ones I remember using before as I wrote my story about my friend Stephen who, brilliant that he was, messed up his life when he decided to explore recreational drugs to the extreme. About a week ago, I got word that another person who we both knew, died unexpectedly at 38 years-old. No cause of death was described, though based on what I remember of her when I left that town and all of those people behind more than a decade ago, I would bet that it had to do with drugs. Anyway, this piece, which I have only written and read over only once, didn’t turn out to be about that in the way I’d wanted. I was going to tell the story of it, but instead, the story sort of told itself, pulled its details from my surroundings and all the memories triggered by the senses and the task of writing. I did manage to follow all of the rules on the first round—and I only spent about two hours writing this—but I think, as with my other stories, that it could be better. This is the first time I’ve written these journal-like versions of the assignment. I think the short story is a better form—requires more work, for sure—but leaves you with a better product. I hope as I return to this in the coming weeks, I will find some better inspiration than what I have here.

Virtual Soundscapes: An Early Draft of the Ghost Story Assignment

“Once upon a time the forest went on for ever. It is almost impossible to imagine now how continuous that forest was.” -Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence

A digital fire burns on my outdated laptop. To my right, my current laptop floats a couple of jellyfish its watching through a live cam. Plugged into that is an external monitor I’ve had for years. That’s set on a live cam as well, though this one shows a crowded coral reef. I’m guessing it is an aquarium of some kind though since I don’t see much sunlight coming through the surface (L1) (BACKLIGHT). Two cold (COLD 1-2)watery images and one burning hot—all of them room-temperature if we were honest—and then there’s the coldest (COLD 3)display of all, this document I’m looking into as I write this—the white wall of possibility…

I turn down the ambient underwater music that accompanied yet another aquarium display I’d had going before I opened up the document here. How strange that there is such a specific style to the music people choose to compliment their aquarium videos with—ethereal, ambient, slow, low and interspersed with bubbly swallowing sounds (SOUND 1-5). I consider this as I look into the flowing ribbons (TEXT 1)of jellyfish tentacles (HANDS)wondering how they are not all already knotted together by now. They look soft, like they’d already been picked apart by predators—and they swirl in the liquid surroundings, like abandoned lung tissue or something that was not completely water soluble. They remind me of the cables that connect the microphones to my sound recorder—the thing I must use for my final project. It sits there on my work table, atop a round mirrored tray, ready to capture if only I knew what…. (SIG).

I wonder how they keep those sharks from eating everything in the tank (LOCK). I look closer and see what seems to be perhaps a dead shark lying at the bottom of the tank. It is hard to tell exactly, but it is not moving (STRANGE) (ANIMAL). I can only see the tale and perhaps the dorsal fin because the rest of it is obscured by the coral. Realizing that it is likely not moving because it is dead gives me a little bit of a sick feeling (VACANCY)—so I fast forward through the footage, which is not live after all and see that while everything else moves for the next few hours, the tail does not. Everything else seems to be swimming right by it, stingrays, small tropicals, taking no notice of it whatsoever (COMMUNE). Had they had feet, the would have left footprints (FOOTPRINTS)all over the poor thing’s remains. Certainly, that fish is dead or else all of these fish are virtual manifestations—and the entire habitat merely a digital montage, an assemblage, a work of art….

Outside, the weather is dreary and gray (L2-3). I doubt I’ll see the sun at all today (L4). The brightest thing outside is the white wall of the neighbor’s garage that sits about twenty feet from my window. Beyond it, the sky is that same muted whitish color.

Looking at the dead shark’s tale (RUINS) (OBJECT)once again, I decide to change to another virtual background.

It takes me a bit of time, but I am able to find a couple of forest creek and river videos with lighting very similar to the lighting from outside coming thorugh the windows (L5). I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes I like to match my reality augmentations to the reality they are augmenting. The only incongruence separating the virtual from the real is the presence of singing birds which does not seem so appropriate with how rainy it is here. The constantly fluctuating yet random and unpredictable sound of the water flowing is relaxing, but the birds are a bit disruptive—an intrusion that breaks the illusion. I mute the video with the disruptive bird sounds and then notice there is a different bird in the background of the other video—farther away, more in the background—that I had not heard before. It’s strange the way sound works in layers—both in a sound editing program and in the real world of sonic perception—layers, bands perhaps…

What time is it?I ask myself, knowing that this is such a lazy way to use the rule. I had intended to write a short story, possibly dealing with the loss of another friend who I’d lost touch with. I found out about her death last week—couldn’t sleep so came downstairs to the office and opened Facebook. There was her picture and her ex-husband’s tribute to her. She died “unexpectedly”. That’s all that was explained. Those of us that knew her back in the day (STORY) had our suspicions, before she disappeared the first time and then reappeared, though the reappearance was after I had moved away.

It was a threshold(THRESHOLD)period in many of our lives. Things were changing for everyone. Those who had married young were divorcing while others were trying it out for the first time. People were changing careers, getting their first big jobs, having kids, and so forth. I was finishing up school much much later than most people my age, starting a new life here in Charlotte, deciding what to bring with me and what to leave behind….

When I started writing this, I wanted to say something about the way ghosts of people who have passed and ghosts of people from your past are similar and different at the same time. In some ways, she feels closer now than before she died. There is a distance that’s transgressed….either her mind is infinite or it is expired. You’ll have to consult your religion if you want to know which one it would be for you, but I like the think it’s the first option—with all who I’ve known who have passed into that next life…

Two friends lost to the same demon. But there are so many more than two if I go thinking about it. There have been family members and acquaintances, colleagues, teachers….the people you love and some people you hardly knew at all, but their death stays with you because it happened right before graduation, your senior year in high school. It’s funny how you will remember the weather surrounding times like these—years later. You remember the weather when you heard the news and that weather stayed with you for a time until it passed and you started thinking about it less and less…..though for some, not so much less and less at all….

The water which should be relaxing me makes me feel cold and unpleasant. But that is the day, so I leave it and wish briefly for the sun.

It’s 1:42. The day is youngish though far from just beginning.

I’ve been focusing a lot on sound with my project, but it’s rare that you can distance sound entirely from some physical source—sometimes living, sometimes geological, but oftentimes the sounds things make are very secondary to the reasons we pay attention to them.

(I’m not sure what exactly I just said, but I like the way that sounds…)

…but what does this mean, this idea of sounds being separate from their sources?

Sometimes sounds and their unidentified sources create amazing mysteries. We’ve all been there. You hear something faint in the distance—perhaps the tinkling of wind chimes (CHIMES) or the sounds of children (CHILD) laughing or singing. The hairs on your neck stand up and then you realize it’s just a commercial coming down the stairs from the next room—or the washing machine has switched to the spin cycle—or someone far off is running a leaf blower, a jackhammer and an air compressor all at the same time.

In horror, sound is probably the most effective tool in inspiring fear—though this sense works best in film or music, I would say. In fiction or language-based horror, without physical sound components, the horror is often better connected with thoughts, images, or feelings, though E. A. Poe was quite fond of exploring the horrors of sounds—like in “The Tell-Tale Heart” the way the sound of the dead man’s heart was muffled like the sound a watch makes wrapped in cotton….

Film can do a lot, but it can’t so much work with smell…I mean, there are those famous scenes of smelliness, like in Star Wars when Luke, Leah, and Hans all wind up in the trash compactor. You assume is smelly, but is it food? Is it machine waste? Is it gray water….I have no idea what the garbage smells like. In writing, I would likely know. The smells would be perceived through the language building process (SMELLS 1-5)

With language you can build the subtleties of a smell into a scene—like the underscent of ozone and damp earth that combine to give fog its odor and its tinge of danger—or the chalky sugary residue of marshmallowswhich linger longer than the sugar that dissolves almost immediately. Even the powdered coating of moth wings that makes an old box in an attic feel grainy (TEXT 2), I’m not sure if it smells like anything, but I think it smells like time and aging. In language, I can say something smells one way, but then I can twist (TEXT 3) it: like the delicious scent of apples and cinnamon bubbling on the stove understitched (TEXT 4) with a litany of chemical residues—fingernail polish remover, Lysol, and orange-scented Clorox wipes (LITANY). In language, you can make your reader eat something and then you can use it to make them feel sick: in film, you only see the person vomiting, often with chunks (TEXT 5) of it sticking to their face for maximum visual effect….

What a nasty turn this piece took, btw. I thought I was writing about sound and fish and peacefulness. Somehow (INTERFERENCE)that turned to death and cold and stinkiness….rot….and finally vomit. Oh well at least it follows all the rules. I have until the last day to make it work as a whole.

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Addenda

NOTES:

Okay, I spent a good amount of time yesterday working on Project 4. I finished up the Studio today, and I've got lots of good material to work with, especially now that I have figured out how to use my sound recorder.

This weekend, I decided that one of the biggest problems I'm having working with sound is that I'm so unorganized. Every time I make a recording, I wind up with at least 3 more files. I have yet to establish a filing system or labeling system for these files so really, they are just scattered all over the place. I still need to figure out how to change the format of my multitrack files into something that can be shared. I've been having some problems with format.

This makes me think of what hell the Final Portfolio will be if I don't get all of my stuff better organized. I need to build a folder called "Final Portfolio" and then inside of it create separate folders for each project. That way I can get a sense of all the work I have been doing. I find that without this kind of organization I can wind up losing a lot of work.

In the image attached to this posting I include a picture of my work station at home. On the table I started organizing all the tech I have laying around the house that might be useful in this project. I wound up going though pounds of cables as I was searching for all the pieces of my sound recorder. Here's part of what I was dealing with in the picture (see attached).

I've also spent time recording and mixing sound. This is a sophisticated process that requires a great deal of time and expertise to master. My stuff sounds like some sort of David Lynch style rendering of hell. I wonder how much better I can do in the next month--maybe I'll check out some Youtube instructional videos for some tips?

Finally, I have made some videos that show the things I was doing in Garage Band while layering and editing sounds. Both examples involved texts I read for this project. In the first one, I read from A Book of Silence (p. 173) and in the second my husband and I both read from the opening lines of Jaws. I'm intrigued by this idea of hearing written texts read aloud in different voices--and then comparing those voices to that of the actual author reading their own work and then to the experience of hearing it in your own mind. Sara Maitland talks a bit about the manner in which "silent reading" evolved over time in A Book of Silence....when I found her reading her work, I must say it did not match the sound of the voice that was speaking in my head....nothing at all like it....

Anyway, I feel like my inquiry project is progressed a bit further now that I'm aware that the next step involves creating a filing and labeling system for all of these sound files. If it every stops raining and if my husband's knee ever heals from his surgery, I will suit up with my mic kit and talk a sound walk....not sure how this will be experienced by someone wearing headphones, but I'm hoping it will "sound" like you are taking the "walk" with me.