For my Sound Project, I went to the Petco in Union Square and walked around recording both the animals and the people shopping there. Just a few of the many sounds included in my piece are: crickets in a trash can (aka lizard lunch), the store’s background music, excited children, bubbling fishtanks, me slurping a beverage, and the loud crashing sound of people walking down the metal stairs. Since I seem to have misplaced all of my process drawings, please enjoy a high-quality artistic rendering of one of the scenes that I recorded.
Working in Premiere, I learned a lot about how sounds change along with the speed they’re played at—particularly that the human voice becomes exponentially creepier as it is slowed down. Playing multiple different sounds at once also makes the sound environment feel a lot busier and more chaotic than it would seem if only a single recording were played, even if the “manufactured” version with multiple sound layers is a lot closer to the true experience of being in the shop. I think that if I had more practice working with sound, and more familiarity with the overall genre of sound art, the project as a whole would improve if I were to work on it further.
