Monthly
Statement:
October 2005
Accumulating sound during these two last months has proved
to be an interesting experience. It's strange: when I pull
out my mic, people don't look at me with curiosity. They rather
seem to be annoyed by my presence, by the very existence of
some dude with earphones holding a microphone at trains and
stations. Their faces tell me something like "what the
heck are you doing on my train?" or "don't you even
dare to get any closer to me, weirdo" or maybe simply
"get a life!"
Only once, however, someone gave me shit.
Surprisingly enough, it was a subway musician, a lady
singing and playing the guitar, who looked pretty annoyed
and then didn't let me explain what my project was about.
She refused to listen to me and walked away. Fortunately,
I've been able to capture other musicians, like these two
girls whose band is called Mother Tongue (check
their
website), this awesome
guy singing on the G train, or these two
black old men playing southern music on Grand Central
Station.
Most of my recordings involve, as one could
have expected, mechanical train sounds (trains arriving,
braking,
honking,
leaving)
and announcers (recorded
or live).
And, of course, people. For my piece I plan to use only small
bits of conversations, but I've had the chance to record whole
conversations that have been quite funny, like these ones
about racism
and crack.
I've also been lucky enough to get a few spontaneous opinions
from people about my accumulation project (like this
one, or this
other one) and about the accumulator himself (here
and here).
Thank you for your support.
More categorized sound samples here
for your listening pleasure. Or, if you have a lot of time,
be my guest and listen to my raw (uncategorized, untracked,
unedited) material here.
But beware: two hours of uncut footage can be really fucking
boring. Even I fell asleep once.
Process:
I'm accumulating sounds from public transportation systems
in New York City (6 months) and Lima-Peru (6 months) with
a minidisc digital recorder.
|
