complete

Yeah! Here is the final edit/product of this video project. Please watch and please feel free to comment! click on the picture to watch the video!!!!

Rough Sound Edit

This is a sample of the two previous silent clips linked together with recorded sounds.

silent rough cut part two

This is a another series of stills and short moving shots linked together in a silent rough edit.

heres a silent rough cut

This is the first series of images that I put together from my walk around the Brady St area.

Brady St and Porches

I am going to check out the neighborhood and area around Brady Street. I always thought that that area was second best as far as quality of living potential. Both areas (the area are around Locust and around Brady St) are populated with smaller houses and quiet streets less traversed than many in the city. Plus it looks kind of cute and eclectic.
I began my walk on Hamilton and Humboldt. I then evoked a new sort of strategy. The streets around this area do not fall in the same sort of grid pattern that they do around Bremen. I decided to go straight then right, then left and continue on with that. I am going to focus my image capturing to porches and the sky. Porches are great because they can be really haphazard or they can display pieces of the people that live there. They can be expressive or just messy. And you never really know what or when things are going to be in the sky.

10 Questions

1.Whats the difference in exploring one enclosed area versus loosely meandering down streets.
2.Where are good places to enter when the rain begins?
3.Would bars and coffee shops mostly be too loud due to the music etc? (and the copyright issues with bar coffee shop music)
4.What coffee shops have a more quiet ambiance?
5.Should I actually enter the spaces between peoples house, or is that too much?
6.Should I approach people or just capture their sounds naturally? Would it be more surprising or more boring?
7.Are sounds more or less interesting when they are distorted?
8.What kind of sounds are good to distort?
9.What kind of distortion sounds the best in play back?
10. What sort of feelings do different sounds evoke?

Weird?

I loved to just sit for a minute on that bench. Just sitting and listening. That is something that I tend to do when I am traveling and in a foreign area but not something that I, or maybe even most people, take the time out to do in the areas that they are in everyday. It almost feels “weird” or maybe looks weird to simply sit by yourself, alone in a park. But it's actually not. I think I felt far less weird sitting on the bench because not 20 some minutes earlier I was crouched on the street with gigantic headphones on my head, running my hands through a dirt pile. After that I really couldn't care about looking or feeling weird simply sitting on a bench. It didnt feel weird at all.

Murder Story

As I was making my recordings and playing them back later, I was surprised to see that they had undertones of what I considered to be a sort of dark, almost murderous plot. There were the “shots” and then there was the digging noise. That noise to me, sounded like a body being buried in some sort of remote spot. It surprised me as I was digging that it felt/sounded sort morbid. As I was listening to it later it still had that sort of sinister connotation. Then the writing on the tube, to me, was like a last message on the top of a coffin. The fence sounds would the fighting to get out alive; the ruffling leaves would be the people (the buriers) walking away. Then the volleyball game recorded through the can could be a the way it would sound if heard from underground. I wasn't necessarily thinking this when I came up with the ideas for what to record, but it was the experience of doing it that transformed the situation and took me to another place. It was interesting because I don't really think of myself as wanting to make work about darkness or death, and probably wouldn't with intention. But unintentionally it is what seemed to come out of my recordings and what the sounds and the actions seemed to mean/represent. But honestly, it probably doesn't even sound like that.

Peaceful

I felt super peaceful sitting on a bench in the middle of the park. I rarely take the time to just sit (unless I am smoking a cigarette which is not actually all that relaxing). This time though, I just sat in the empty stone studded park and it was very relaxing. Nearby the park is an industrial area that I wandered through. I actually felt very comforted by the low toned industrial hum coming from the white and brick buildings that surrounded me.

The Crazy Rain

This summer of 08 has been like a 30 day monsoon. The whole month of June was wasted under a constant downpour. It was the most rain in June since, well, ever. Summer feels like it just started and it's already July. The rain aggravated me as I walked to collect sounds. Can I keep recording, do I put my stuff away and wait? Can I keep recording? Do I wait? I only had to wait a little while but that rain took away many of the summer sounds I could have collected. The park was pretty much deserted. I was also a little aggravated by the constant bang sounds that echo through the neighborhood. It can be never ending, especially around the Fourth of July. I usually faze the sounds out of my conscious but listening to the city sounds amplified through my headphones I found them hard to block out.

Area from above

This is a shot of the area from which I gathered my images. It is the Humboldt and Brady Street area. It was taken from the creepy satellite image off of Google Maps. (Creepy because it seems strange that any area can now be viewed from a satellite...)