The discussion of the soundscape in Reading Sounds made me think about something my mother said one day. She told me that she loves staying at my house because it reminds her of how her grandmother's house sounded when she was a little girl. We live in an old adobe house that is set back a bit from the road, so other than the occasional tractor or crop dusting plane, there aren't a lot of 'city' sounds.
It is easy to overlook many of the sounds that fill our soundscape. And, I think even easier to overlook the way our soundscape affects us. I can think of different places that I love, and a major part of those memories involve sound. Sitting on the porch of the cabin, I could hear the locusts, frogs, waves from the lake hitting the shore, the creak of the porch swing...All of these background sounds come together to form the memory that I have.
I listened to several of the sound clips, the first being Aporee Radio which was a collection of city sounds accompanying a Google map. It highlighted the busy city soundscape. The second clip I listened to was called Ground Truth. It was a video with more of an educational theme to it. The meteorologists were using video and sound to express the purpose for Ground Truth, and stress the need for us to protect our environment. The third site I went to was called The Listening to Birds Blog. It combined written text about the birds with a link to a sound clip of the bird calls. I think each of these sound clips offer a different example of how incorporation of a range of modalities can lead to more effective forms of communication.
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Education and Technology: The Literacies of a Techno World
3 comments:
I love your poetic way of describing sounds heard while sitting at the porch of the cabin. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing... it takes you back to places you can't go back to, in time or place... like the golden beaches of Goa or stiff cliffs of Hong Kong that plunge straight into the South China Sea or white Himalayan peaks hovering above the fall colours of Kashmir... Ah well, I better stop before I start missing my days as a reporter too much!
It is interesting to see how peacefulness sounds different to everyone. You would like that it would be silence, but in actuality it isn't. For the greatest sounds is of the ocean. I could sit on the beach for hours and just listen to it moving back and forth.
Robing-
think your focus on sound as memory is lovely. It struck me as I was reading for Wednesday that we don't talk very often about what a powerful trigger sound can be. If you think of it, sound as warning (here comes a car, a horn sounding) is all base on memory. It made me think too about the power of other senses to capture memory and mood. I think smell has always been a powerful reminder for me - whether it is of my mom's house, the dorm room I despised, or the interesting way the desert smells before rain.
Jen
PS-Your house sounds like a lovely place to visit.
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