Sit Spot .MP3 (Weeks 1–2)

Make a short audio recording (or collage, mix, or composition) of a place that feels meaningful or resonant to you. This could be a new recording, or a return to a place you’ve explored before. We’re interested in your relationship to a soundscape — how sound reflects your experience, your interests, or your work. Use any recording device you have available: your phone, a handheld recorder, etc.

Respect

• Be mindful of your presence as a listener and recorder. Be respectful of other people and other species. You are encouraged to redact, obscure, or edit out any content you feel should remain private or protected.

Requirements

• A 1-minute (max) audio file to share in our next class. You may record or compile more, but please select a 1-minute excerpt to present.
• The recording can be raw, edited, layered, or collaged — however you wish. The focus is on deep listening, not technical perfection.

Considerations

• If you had one minute to share the sonic identity of a space, what would it be?
• What individual sounds do you hear? How do they come together into a gestalt, an ecosystem?
• What social, political, environmental conditions do these sounds reflect?
• How do you relate to this place through sound?

Readings and Listenings

Required

• Shook World, King Vision Ultra
• Ear Piece, Pauline Oliveros
• Toward Polymorphous Radio, Tetsuo Kogawa, c. 1981

Extended

• Vancouver Soundscape, World Soundscape Project
• Sh!t, Simone White
• KMRU: Spaces
• Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sound (Ubiquity section of Guide to Sonic Effects chapter, pp 130-145), Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue