Unheard Sounds – Audio Project 1

This week I began researching and listening to contact microphone pieces, like the ones I hope to produce for this project. A quick Google search first took me to a site called soundslikenoise.org, a blog run by sound artist Jay-Dea Lopez dedicated initially to discovering a region of New South Wales, Australia through the use of field recordings, but has since evolved into a larger discussion into many aspects of sound and what part it has in our history.

The first page is filled with soundscape after soundscape, a mixture of raw field recordings from many different types of microphones, including contact and hydrophones. One piece in particular that I found interesting was a recording using a coil pickup microphone, used to pickup the sound of electronic devices, which consisted of white noise, and a series of regular beeps. Another was recorded using a computer. I find these sounds fascinating, so I may incorporate something like this into one of my photos.

One point I found interesting was something he encountered while trying to record the sounds of a bridge with a contact microphone (written in ‘A Bridge, a microphone, the Police’). Whilst he was getting the recording, a couple of police officers approached him and asked him to explain what he was doing. Some drivers who past him thought his actions seemed suspicious, and called to police to find out what he was doing. It might be something I have to keep in mind during my own recordings.

He has also created many pieces of work for exhibitions and galleries, and has published some tracks too. On his website, Lopez provides a contact section, so I have the option of contacting him with a few questions within the next week or so.

As written on the Wild Mountain Echoes blog, contact microphones are “used to sense vibrations”. Although they are mostly used for amplifying acoustic guitars and ukuleles, they “can also be used to detect outside vibrations” in field recordings. She goes on to say that hydrophones work in a similar way, detecting vibrations underwater.

I also stumbled upon Jez Riley French’s website by accident, via a link from another website about these mics. On this site are several of his recordings that can be heard via an embedded Soundcloud widget, and this is also where you can purchase some of his own microphones.

Some practical points from Tim Prebble’s Music of Sound blog: ‘The First Rule of Contact Mic Club’
– Blu-Tac, double sided tape and gaffa tape to attach the mic to the subject
– The objects that create the nicest sound can surprise you, so explore everything
– Custom mics can be requested from Trance Audio
– Experiment with different “activators” (items used to create sounds, like sticks, metal rods etc)
– “There is no acoustic” – there is no sound inbetween ‘hits’ for example
– These mics generally need a pick up in order to produce a decent recording, though it needs to be matched with the microphone, so should really be sold as a pair.

Since learning more about hydrophones and coil pickup microphones, I think I would like to use a different one for each soundscape e.g. one soundscape would be made up of hydrophone recordings, another from contact mic recordings. With that in mind, I would probably arrange the photos in a ‘progression’: water, then land based, then technology. This may have to be changed slightly once I start recording, as hydrophones are fairly expensive (although I have seen ways to alter/cover the average microphone to be able to use it underwater) and I am yet to try the contact and coil pickup mics since they arrived in the post yesterday. This could also depend heavily on the quality of recordings I collect – if one of the microphones is producing much higher quality audio clips, I might have to focus just on those sounds.

My WIP aims/objectives

:

– Overall aim: To create a series of soundscapes and photos as an installation for a specific space based on a brief from a gallery.

Aims:
– Learn how to put ‘unheard’ sounds together effectively to create a soundscape experience

– Develop communication skills while contacting a client outside of university

– Learn the process and equipment needed to record using contact mics, coil pickup mics and hydrophones

– Learn how to create from a brief based on a particular space

Objectives:
– Use contact microphones, hydrophones and coil pickup mics to create a soundscape experience.

– To work from a client brief from outside of university to create a piece for a particular space

– Take photos and use photo-editing software to produce images for the installation

– To research equipment used in other sound exhibitions and to use information gained to apply to my own project

Links:

Microphones for nature recording II.: different microphones for different situations

http://soundslikenoise.org/page/2/
https://soundsandimages.wordpress.com/tag/contact-microphone/

More about how to use them: http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/the-first-rule-of-contact-mic-club
http://www.barcusberry.com/product.cfm?ProductID=9

For this project, the first stage is to choose an idea or concept, and I have chosen to work with unheard sounds. This will involve creating soundscapes using audio recorded with contact microphones (and possibly hydrophones) based on a series of photos. The idea is to provide the listeners with an alternate listening experience to those they would usually expect to hear. If you do not expect to hear something, you usually pay more attention to it, as it has not had time to be filtered into background ‘hum’. I also hope to have this work exhibited in a space somewhere in Lincoln later in the semester.

As this is a process including many aspects I have not yet dealt with in my university career, my learning outcomes will be based around these, and discovering how these processes work. Another post will written in a few days confirming my choices, but they will be based on the following:

– Learning how to contact and liaise with a gallery and/or curator with respect to
– Responding to a brief in order to create a piece of work based on a particular space
– Using contact microphones to create a piece of audio work
– Researching equipment and producing a piece to be displayed

As this is the first post, and very early on in the project, I have not yet begun my research. However, there are many topics which I aim to look into in the coming weeks.

Such things include speaking with sound artists (Jez Riley French, Amie Slavin), talking to Uzma Johal (Producer of Threshold Studios) about artists who took part in Frequency 2013, researching microphones, visiting the Sonophilia Festival and speaking with Alex O’Brien, an Audio Production graduate, about her project piece which she exhibited in a gallery, and the process of getting her work to that point.