Close Listening: For this exercise, I couldn’t resist deeply listening to a treadmill upon which I was running at Coles. Initially, I had not planned incorporate my audio art assignment into my workout, but I found the drone of the machine in combination with internal rhythms (pulse, cracking joints) fascinating. The treadmill itself emitted a steady hum of machinic mids interspersed with high-pitched bleeps from pressed buttons. As my heart rate increased (eventually maxing out at 158), I could both hear and feel my pulse quicken and the contraction of veins and valves .

My aural ken spread out, and I began to listen to the room as a whole. Though each machine was functioning at a different rpm, the similarity in their sound caused their sounds to spill/merge into each other, creating a solid drone base. Upon this I heard the landing of other people’s feet, each in time with a rhythm determined by their individual physiology, I suppose, each foot landed in accordance to the size and musculature of of the body to which it’s attached. It all combined into an arhythmic phasing effect held together by the drones of the machines. It was a sonic space amazing in its texture and variation.

Far listening: For this entry I wanted to write about something I brought up up in class that provided possibly the most amazing listening experience I’ve had since moving to New York (especially in terms of distance): Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night.”

It occurred mid-month of last December. I was sitting in the “living room” of our apt., and my roommates and I had the door open because it was fairly warm within. Slowly, this mass of sound started sipping in through the open window. It was difficult to make out at first, but it grew in intensity and began to take on a harmonious or musical quality. I climbed out on the fire escape, and saw a huge crowd of people coming down 4th street (where my apt is placed), and everyone was carrying a boombox. The sound became accompanied by the voices of the participants.

I rushed downstairs to get a closer look, and could finally make out what was occurring on the micro-level of this massive “orchestra.” It’s a minimalist drone type piece sprinkled with mallet percussion, and when compounded by the thousand or so boomboxes, all out of phase due to different positions of origin in the parade, the effect is very dense and, frankly, magical.

In terms of listening far, “Unsilent Night” provided the best distance based, urban listening experience I’ve ever had. I went up to our apt’s roof, and watched the parade proceed towards Thompson Square Park. As the parade walked away, the distance provided a synesthetic effect for the receding sound in that I felt like I could see the way the buildings and the layout of urban space molded the sound waves. I felt like I could see the waves rising up through the buildings, and then spread out over the skyline. I continued listening until it became so faint that it was overtaken the normal sonic occurrences of the East VIllage (yelling, screams, horns, loud bangs of unknown origin). I attempted to hold onto the sounds, but my aural grip eventually slipped. The way the music decreased was melancholic in that a gorgeous music event just steadily receded into nothingness. But all in all, an amazing sonic experience. And I wasn’t even on drugs!

And so is created my Audio Art sketchbook. I’ll be linking all my audio art experiments to my blog.

But for now, there is nothing.