I tried to listen to several sites, but didn't have any luck with a few of them. The sites I was successfully able to listen to included Earth to Earth, Sound Seeker (sounds of various places in New York City).
On the Ear to Earth link, I listened to the Song of the Kauai 'O'o, and extinct Hawaiin bird and the Stati d'Acqua / States of Water, which seemed to be a composition of varied water sounds along with other music. It was fascinating listening to the extinct bird in it's natural habitat with the sounds of the forest in the backround. And to realize that this bird is no longer in existance made the experience even more fascinating. Imagine all the animals or people for that matter that generations to come will never be able to hear or know in that manner. What a wonderful way to preserve them in some way. The States of Water piece was really interesting and made such a nice relaxing piece to listen to.
The other site, Sound Seeker, was also interesting, but instead of profiling quite places in a forest or in "nature" it profiles different areas of New York City and surrounding burroughs. I listed to a train that made a stop in the South Bronx (I chose this b/c my father is from the South Bronx and it was a way for me to connect with that history a bit), and the Saturday's farmer's market, among other things.
Ok, how did I connect this back to the readings? Selfe's piece is certainly sticking with me more, particularly her emphasis on how people need to have the opportunity to draw on and communicate with "all available approaches, not simply those limited to the two dimensional space of a printed page." Sound conveys so much meaning that cannot be ignored, no matter the piece of communication, and can be a powerful tool to convey specific meanings.
3 comments:
What a great observation about preserving an extinct bird through an audio file. It reminds me of the tapes I have from my grandmother. When I was small we lived in Australia; we seldom made long distance phone calls back to the states, so instead sent back and forth cassette tapes. Her voice is preserved on those tapes -- same sort of thing, I guess.
I like how you chose the South Bronx sounds because of the connection it provides to your father. This is a useful illustration of how sound usually doesn't exist in isolation from other modalities. We are always taking in multiple kinds of information and using our own experiences to make sense of it.
Susan's comments about the tapes was interesting to me too. In 1972, my grandparents drove to the southern tip of south america in an RV and kept an audio journal of their adventure. I got the tapes from my grandmother awhile back and made copies. I have to admit that I cringed a few times at comments they made about "others" (to put it politely), but this is still a remarkable snapshot of a particular time period, cultural context, and experience. Listening to these tapes is a far different experience than reading the print journal that they also kept or from viewing the mountain of pictures they took.
I like your view of sound as historical document. Another rhetorician - Dickie Selfe - is doing a sound archive that chronicles way people gain their literacies in various modes. I think it brings up really interesting questions about how we will store and file and use sound as history in later generations.
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