Every now and then I need to get a new perspective on the way I see. Over the years, I’ve learned to expand my visual awareness by exploring different disciplines. For example, when I work with a dancer, I see how stillness is as essential as movement. When I work with a playwright, I see how pictures are formed in the mind’s eye.

So I decided to take a course at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called “Soundwalk Studio: Making Environmental Sound Art.” I was attracted by this line in the course descrip­tion: “By focusing on the soundscape in which we are immersed, we can find new appreciation of our surroundings and discover a palette of material from which to create art.”
 
As I read it, I thought, “If I looked at my environment through sound, how would it change the way I see?”

Frankly, I had no idea what I meant by that, other than that I wanted to shake up my visual language. I told the instructor, Spencer Kiser, my intention, and that I would be using a video camera as my recording device, because I wanted to pay attention to sound, and let the image surprise me later.

As in most schooling, what we learn during the time in class is most valuable for what it opens up to us outside of class. A small reference can be a spark that grows into a full investigation. For me, it was a quote by John Cage from The Future of Music: Credo that Kiser read to us the first evening. “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”

That night, walking home, I saw a garbage truck and heard its louder-than-usual accompaniment. Normally I would switch to another block. Instead, I decided to shoot. The truck was loading the noisiest possible trash: shards, scraps and entire pieces of steel and aluminum ducts. The sound was ear splitting, but not just because of the decibel level. It actually seemed dangerous in texture and shape: hard, sharp, heavy. As I concentrated on the sound, the visual elements became more potent. It was not just visual, it was visceral.

A few days later, I experienced another everyday event in a new way. Like many people, I go to cafés to think, write, ponder a problem or a project. Being surrounded by a tapestry of sight and sound helps me to concentrate. But when my café-mates talk too loud, especially on cell phones, I get annoyed at their intrusion into my private space.
 
This time, instead of trying to ignore a cell-phone conver­sation right next to me, I listened intently without looking at the caller. In fact, I copied down every word. The following is just a tiny piece of my transcript:

“She’s really stressed, y’know. It’s heart attackish. She should never have had that kid. Yeah. Well, she doesn’t work, yeah…So many clothes don’t fit me. I didn’t eat that whole pasta thing by the way. I just had a few bites of it before I went to bed. Oh, I know, I was so starving I took some crackers…So last night when I got home I had salsa which is no calories whatsoever, and I ate about ten spoons of salsa and no chips...No this isn’t Saltines, they were the elongated square ones, you know. I found a recipe, remember I was telling you about, bean based, ground beef and a bunch of bacon, I forget, I don’t even bake it. I baked it once and it came out dry. I can Xerox it for you. You put—I wanna say they’re red beans. It really comes out good. Hello? Hello? Yeah, yeah, I heard it…Y’know, I wanna go get fresh fruit, I can’t keep eating out like this.”

When I finally looked up from my notebook, I was surprised to see a slender, elegant young woman. As I took in every visual element—her earrings, hairstyle, shoes, cell phone—I realized that I was constructing a portrait of contemporary life. This twenty-minute episode was, for me, a cultural artifact, a small gem. I found it to be, as John Cage said, fascinating.

Does this mean that I will now consider all deafening city sounds as music, or inane cell-phone conversations as creative fodder? I doubt it. But these exercises have given me another layer of seeing. I now have, in my creative library, one more color in my palette, one more shade in my tonal range, one more point in my sensory IQ. I’m a little bit richer, and I like that kind of bank account. CA

© 2008 W. Richmond