[Audio Walk] Artists Statement

Group: Anne Feldman, Katherine Kwan, Danning Lu

Our response to sound is demonstrated in four different ways, physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally. Our audio walk uses elements from the four different types of responses to create an interesting narrative carried our solely by audio. The participants will be split into two groups, each taking a different route and experiencing the walk though two different characters.

Some keynote sounds include everyday sounds that are often unconscious to us. These include footsteps, wind, students talking in hallways and other sound elements that can be heard around the York campus. Sound signals heard through the walk include sounds of an elevator and cell phones ringing.

Different parts of the walk will affect the participants in different ways. Through the narrative of the two characters, we hope that both scenarios will create a physiological effect. This will be carried out by music, creating an increased heart rate due to the fear and excitement of an unknown situation. This is also related to the behavioral effect, as the fast tempo in the music will motivate listeners to feel rushed, due to the situation they are in. The psychological state of participants will be affected by the story of the character whose shoes they will walk in through conversations they are having throughout the walk. These conversations will allow the participant to get inside the character’s head, and hopefully feel a similar emotion. Cognitive effects will be noticed in areas where many sounds are present at once, and each participant must choose what sounds to focus on.

We wanted to put a playful twist on the assignment and create a walking tour that told a story. Through focusing on the four ways we are affected by sound, the class will be able to participate in the world of the characters we created, and see where they end up. 


For my part in the group, I did the editing of the original sound tracks made by Katherine. Also the field recording of the background sound.

[Audio Walk]

Girl's Part


Guy's Part

[credits]
Girl's part: ending music: First Love - Utada Hikaru
Guy's part: ending music: My Heart Will Go On

Girl's Map











Guy's Map

Here is the MAP! [DRAFT]

For Group Members

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/gv1.mp3

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/gv3.mp3
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/bv2.mp3

Deep Listening

        There are more sounds than we have ever thought about while listening deeply in the lecture room. While people are typing their paragraphs, the sound of typing could be heard clearly, which indicated how fast the person is typing. The sound of moving plastic bags sounds much louder than it used to be since the bags are in such a big room. Other than sounding louder, the bags also sounds noisy some how. There were also sounds of people’s movement indicated by the sound of the friction of clothes and the sound of the friction between shoes and the ground. The sound of friction is also pretty loud and I could even hear the sound of the sands on the ground. There were also people whispering. Although I cannot hear the whisper clearly since it seemed to be far from where I was sitting, it turned out to be a buzzy sound. The sound of the fan from a laptop next to me can also be heard clearly, which are not easily to be heard in such a big room.

     Deep listening brought people with more sounds that they may not hear in their daily life. Since human beings are “visual animals”, we, as human beings, prefer to see rather than just hearing. So there are many interesting sounds that we might just ignored because we prefer to see. Deep listening could exaggerate the regular sound we might hear in a specific area, and can help us hearing some other sounds that we always ignore in the scenes, just like the sound of the fan of a laptop.  

Audio Walk - very first recording of the background sound

Boy's route:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/110315_001.mp3
DOWNLOAD

right click -> save link as...

Girl's route:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/110315_002.mp3
DOWNLOAD

right click -> save link as...

MurMur Audio Walk

      So I chose to go for the Murmur audio walking on Spadina Avenue. Walking on the street with different people telling different stories of the same site, I felt that I was in a big city museum. I had experience walking while listening to the explanation of what I am looking at. However, that experience was only in museums. Murmur provides people to walking around the city and hearing people talking about the site and their own memories of the site. On Spadina Avenue, some old sites have all gone and changed to different retails, however, in the sound track, we can still get to know what it was in the past. For instance, there was a man talking about his art gallery and his stories in that gallery, but in the same time, what we have in front of us is a closed retail store. It is interesting to have things like this while walking, what we’ve seen is not what we’ve heard, and what we’ve heard is the history of both the site and the city while what we’ve seen is the present of the site or the city. 

     While walking on the street, listening to the stories, for people who haven’t seen the old street, the stories create a space for the listeners to imagine what the street looks like before; and for people who have seen the old street before, these stories will definitely bring back their memories as well as their own stories.      

Route Timing

                 G                                       B

1m           Golden Lady                     between ACW and Vari, approaching 36      
                hungry,
                talk about
                people eating

1min 30s get phone call
                [ topic]
                 who's the guy?

2min       Enter Vari                         Fire hydride
                about to lose
                reception
                going 2 elevator

                                                          what the statue is about?                                                 

3min       Elevator                            approaching orange statue
                slow and creepy             still on the phone, reads the description out loud

4min       top of Ross                      approaching stairs

5min       end point                         end point
                tired of waiting               gets girl's number from friend
                turns music on               calls the girl

5'45"             Talking to each other, find out they were at the different sides of the same spot

Map for Audio Walk

So here is the map for the audio walk. Since our group decide to do two routes rather than one, there will be two lines on the map to represent each routine. (Girl's-orange, Boy's-Blue)

For the visual walk, please check here