Natural Construction – Combining Natural and Mechanical Sounds

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Natural Construction – Combining Natural and Mechanical Sounds
For my final I decided to focus most on collecting various sounds, natural and manmade, to combine together in a single audio. I am investigating the process of combining natural and mechanical sounds and the feelings that come when listening to them together. Thinking back to the Providence River, I wanted to create something that I might have heard walking along the river in an urban setting. I wanted this audio to be the main focus of my project. I then used this audio in a sound installation, listening to it in the natural setting of my backyard. I thought of bringing a performative aspect into it by adding clips showing how I obtained the mechanical sounds in the same setting as where the listening took place.
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The two main components of my final project are my homemade audio and the video that corresponds to it. When making the audio, I wanted to create something super simple that could be remade almost anywhere. This is because thinking back to the Providence River and the sounds that surrounded it, everything was very accessible. These types of sounds could be heard everywhere and if we were still at school they would have been available to everyone. By recreating the phenomenon I hoped to achieve the same feeling I would have felt walking downtown by the canal in my own home. I started by collecting natural sounds like birds chirping, water flowing from the creek behind my backyard, and leaves rustling in the wind. I edited these in Reaper to make sure that each sound file would have equal presence in the final audio. I then focused on collecting my mechanical sounds. I wanted these to be simple sounds made from objects found around my house to show that anyone could remake this audio. Once these were together I combined them with the natural sounds in Reaper to create my final product. Next task was using this audio in some type of installation. I immediately thought about my backyard and how almost all of my nature sounds had originated from there. I wanted to capture myself listening to my homemade audio in the space of my backyard to further my idea that this project could be done by anyone. Anyone could remake this experience in their own backyard if they wanted to. To add to this I opted to include clips showing how I recorded my mechanical sounds serving as a tutorial in the same space I was listening in.

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I am happy to say I am pleased with the outcome of this project. I might have done it differently had we been at school, but I am somewhat glad it had to be done this way because it helped me realize that my main idea for this project was promoting its accessibility in a time where most things are not accessible. Listening to the audio does bring back the sounds I would be hearing around the Providence River and I am glad for that. Looking back though, I kind of wish that I did more sounds involving the mechanical side of things. I feel that if I had more things the audio may sound more balanced as I wanted it to be.

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