FIELD RECORDING

This weekend I went back to the location to record ambient sound. Even though it was only one week after the shooting, the atmosphere was incredibly different. I had forgotten how sound could capture the essence of the environment just as well as video, if not better. There are as many audio microcosms as there are people and things to point a microphone at.

The main idea was to construct without scripting. Just like for the video, creating a setting and letting the content emerge from the environment.

I recorded from the actual shooting location, along the canal and by the lock. Sometimes it sounds like it could be anywhere, even in the jungle at some points because of all the birds. But if you listen carefully, it is the sound of home. Wild and tame.

I also recorded some tracks inside. Sounds of intimacy and non-linguistic verbal exchanges (which have become a focal point of my piece). The sound is the inside looking out, as opposed to outside looking in, in the video. Hopefully, the superposition of both will provide an interesting contrast.

For the presentation, I am thinking of having the sound separated in 8 channels (4 stereo channels split between opposing monitors). Most likely half will be of the actual location and half of the more personal recordings.

Uhhh. Yeah. This is getting techno heavy. Shite.

I am trusting my instinct on this one.

SOUND AND LANGUAGE

The original plan was to exclude sound from the piece, in order to emphasize the distance between context and meaning. But during the shooting, I stopped for a few seconds and listened. There was an amazing sound ambiance, birds flying back from the south, children playing, distant church bells... You could hear spring. Sound is an essential part of the environment and should be included in the presentation. I will go back next weekend and do some field recordings, maybe mix them with bits of conversations, maybe not. 

It would be interesting to capture non-linguistic verbal exchanges. I have been thinking a lot about language lately. How language has become a representational, conditionally imposed set of boundaries, that often fails in taking the message across. Language is drifting further and further from the sensorial and emotional inner discourse. It is time we reappropriate language, create new means of dialoguing and let go of the heavy, impure symbolic that keeps real communication from connecting people as a community. 

In any case, I think the sound should be really loud, as natural and raw as possible, enveloping, inescapable. If time permits, I would like it to be spread around the 8 channels.