Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Blog #2 - Soundwalk


Sound Walk
For my blog I spent some time in the neighborhood that I work, Park Slope. I work on Fifth Ave not too far from the new Barclay Center. I walked around the neighborhood at 2pm when I got off work. It was this past weekend so in some cases certain establishments were still recovering from Sandy. There were a lot of sounds of delivery trucks loading and unloading, a lot of honking and men yelling indistinguishable words to their counterparts. The neighborhood is very bike heavy and ringing of bike bells are frequent.
It seemed to be that the neighborhood was trying to get themselves ready for work since they have pretty much been off for the week due to Sandy. The sounds I heard were mostly quick and fast. The texture seemed to be rough and abrupt. I felt like I was in everyone’s way when really I was nowhere close to anyone.
The sounds of the neighborhood were reflecting on the time of day, on a weekend people wake up late and tend to do their business quicker in order to plan for their night on the town. The bike sounds were startling to me since I ride my bike to work and never realized how many people used their bell, or voice to warn those they are around. While I make all the same sounds, I only concentrate on what I am doing, not how it sounds when we all come together to make our own form of “traffic” if you will.
The background sound seemed to be the chatter of folks, the more dominate would be the traffic sounds and the most prevalent foreground sounds were those delivery trucks who were working a long day and had to be loud on the sidewalk to get their job done. I think this all would have been completely different if Sandy hadn’t had happened. 

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