Dhwani
Collecting one thing daily for 30 days | Collecting sounds
Photo by Ayushi Ranjan
I wanted to collect one thing daily for the month of October in 2021, I explored a lot of ideas on what i could collect daily as an experiment. Collecting sounds wasn’t the first idea that came to my mind, but i decided to stick with it. At the end of this experiment i thought of representing the sound in the physical space so i created an audio piece ( i’d like to believe it is music) of around 1 minute by overlapping all of the sounds i had and showed the vibration it created as a pattern using white sand and a resonance device. Here’s what, where, when, why and how of the experiment performed.
What did I collect?
As an experiment, I collected 30 sounds that I came across in 30 days starting from October 1. I often came across many sounds surrounding me, so most of the days i collected more than on sound. I was fascinated by sounds, while exploring and reading about it i found so many interesting facts about it:
Sound cannot travel through space since there are no molecules to travel through. Here on earth, we have air molecules that vibrate in and around our ears.
Do you know what is louder than a car horn? The cry of a human baby, which is about 115 decibels.
The loudest natural sound on earth is caused by an erupting volcano.
Flies can not hear any kind of sound. Not even their own buzzing.
Since particles are closer together in water than in air, sound can travel four times faster in water.
Sound travels at a speed of around 767 miles per hour.
Horror films like to use infrasound, which is below the range of human hearing. It creates shivering, anxiety, and even heart palpitations in humans when it is being played.
Where and when did I collect them?
My aim was to get as creative as I can get with different sounds I might come across. I collected sounds of things around me or if I get to go somewhere interesting, i would often record the sounds on my mobile using an application called ‘Dolby’. I did not put a constraint on time, at any point of the day and as many times I could collect sounds I did and ended up making a big collection of so many different frequency of sounds.
Why sounds?
Main reasons I wanted to collect sounds were because:
Experimentation:
The curiosity of what it will turn out to be once I put it together is an interesting space to be in.
Being aware of my surrounding:
Collecting sounds would teach me all the repetitive sounds that I might come across daily and don’t pay attention to it.
Inspiration and exploration
It will help me discover new sounds and explore different frequencies around me.
Here’s the list of sounds i collected:
The sound of my walking on dry leaves
Vehicles passing on the road
Me singing a song
Sound of the shower
Sound of the rain
Sound of turning papers
Sound of the wind
Sound of leaves moving because of the wind
Sound of cooking Indian food
Sound of people a Tucker Nicholas from the forum session
Sound of people singing along the song playing in the car while driving
Sounds from the Asian art museum, i visited during over one of the weekends
Sound of tap water
Sound of gulping in the drinking water
Sound of writing with a pen on paper
Sound of door knob while opening and closing the door
Sound of me speaking a few lines about meeting people in life
Sound of all the 7 Chakra frequencies.
Sound of me speaking as an RJ.
Challenges on representation of the sounds
For recording sounds i even got a sound recorder so that i get good quality sounds and can capture even sounds of some insects if possible. However, when i was half way through the month of collecting sounds, i realized that representing those sounds over physical space can be challenging since the frequency of sounds i had wasn’t creating a visible pattern. To create these patterns i opened up on old speaker to take the vibrating plate out of it, so i could create something called as Chladni plate.
Patterns created on a resonance device i created with whatever i had at home, wasn’t really creating a visible pattern so Day 19 onwards i started including frequencies that creates pattern, like 720Hz, 432 HZ etc which actually represented the 7 Chakras of our body as said by practitioners of Hinduism and also Buddhism. It was fascinating to include all these in my collections and my curiosity increased on what will i have at the end of 30th day of my experiment.
Inspiration for the representation of the sounds in physical space
I particularly read a lot about experiments with sound and their representation as patterns. One experiment that took my attention was ‘Resonantia’ by Louviere and Vanessa:
“Resonantia (echo) reverberates across the media of photography and music. Everything you see is sound. Everything you hear is photography. All the Other Stars is the surreal narrative resonating in between. This unique approach to an artist’s exhibition catalog is also a stand alone piece of the exhibition”
Representing the sounds together
Not always do we get what we assumed as the result at the end of the experiment. The expectation versus reality meme is so apt in my case, but i did get some results out of the sounds i collected and i was also successful in creating an audio cum music piece that had all the sounds collected over the month. Here are some
For editing and layering the sounds together i use the Adobe premiere pro software. The sounds i collected were of durations ranging from 10 seconds to 20 seconds and it was easier to place them or even layer them on top of each other in pure experimental manner to see what comes out of it.
Final Piece
Conclusion
To conclude, it was an interesting month of finding fascination in every sound I heard. I think I am more aware of sounds surrounding me.
Also, I got to understand the frequencies of sound and different vibrations I creates. The representation the sound on the physical space pushed me to add samples of sound that have different amplitudes and which could create patterns on a resonance device. It was also very interesting house a voice recorder since it helped me silence out the noises and listen clearly everything around. The final piece of music that I created was a 55 second piece and it was made of all the sounds collected over the month layered randomly together, some for ranging from 5 seconds of it to even 15 seconds of some sound pieces. On playing that on speaker inside box and a black surface attached to it, It created patterns of the sand on top. Different frequencies created different sounds.
