I have often been fascinated by how our sonic environment affects our physical and mental well-being. As a society, I feel that we prioritise verbal language and conversational communication to be more effective for our emotions than the environmental sonics that surrounds us. When language is broken down it is a bunch of sounds, words and phrases that have formed languages through time, and tradition.
Despite the language is beautiful, it can also become a barrier if you are not bilingual. Similar to music contrast to this the environmental sounds we hear are universal. For example, the sound of traffic will be known as traffic all over the world. I want to focus my piece on the strength of sonic environments and what it does to our sense of comfort, and anxiety. We don’t value surrounding sounds until they are taken away from us.
I studied with Christine Sun Kim, a deaf sound artist who explores the everyday sounds across city centres. Her Work ‘Capturing The City’ focussed on the natural sounds and rhythms that you hear walking around a city. First shown at the Manchester International Festival she chose to focus her soundscape on the city of manchester itself. She appreciates the sound that surrounds her daily; despite her challenges with hearing.
I found her work inspiring towards my own work and I will research further into how and why we do not normally recognise and appreciate the sonic environments around us. It urged me to go and listen to my own environments sonically. Her approach to recognising sound inspired my work for this unit as I went around certain surroundings and collected organic and natural sounds. In the end, I built up a selection of taken sounds t create a soundscape. The work I produced reflects her instinct to highlight the surrounding sounds in day-to-day life.