For project number 3, students were assigned to create a 1 minute sound piece using ambient sound recorded on their own. For my project, I did not look for the sound, the sound came to me. I was doing my laundry in Kohler Hall yesterday and had a terrible, stressing, anxiety inducing experience. The machines were done, but the previous user just left their clothes there for hours on end. I used the washer but the water did not spin dry, which led to the dryer not drying my clothes. I had to do laundry many times over while waiting for people to pick their clothes up. I decided to make this experience my inspiration. I wanted other people, specifically those who made me too angry to feel my anxiety through my art. On page 117 of Mcluhan's book, he saids "In General we feel more secure when things are visible, when we can see for ourselves." Although one cannot see what I felt, by using sounds we are familiar to, people can feel the anxiety of laundry. My original 2 minute sound was a recording of me putting my clothes into the machine, going to the elevator, and going to my floor.
What I modified about the piece was I took my most interesting parts of the sound, drier machine, ambient machine sounds, elevator ticks, button press, and door open, and formatted them in a way to tell a story. The beginning has sound of me starting the laundry process and ends with me being free from anxiety as I leave the elevator. My "heartbeat" is beating rather fast from the stress but as I lead the elevator, the sound fades away expressing that I am "free." By using familiar sounds of a human heartbeat, I felt like I can have the listeners experience my anxiety with me.
In the end, I feel like I am satisfied with this assignment. I do feel a bit guilty about the reasoning behind why I chose these sounds to mix together but looking back at it, it is pretty interesting. This project had a lot of my physical and emotional pain embedded inside of it. It may be what people consider to be "deep" art.
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