Video and Sound

Video&Sound Week 1: Sound Walk "Her Long Black hair"

This is the first time I experienced a Sound&Art work. I heard a woman's peaceful and sad voice, the foot steps, the songs, the sound of the birds and trees and other sounds.  All the sounds felt so real and dragged me into woman's story. Sometimes, I felt a mom spoke behind me, and sometimes I listened a man singing far far away from me. The sound is 3D, it creates an experience of physical immediacy. I'm so fascinated to this technology, and want to learn how to build sound like this. I heard about this technology before. This time, I googled it, and figured out its principle. Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3D sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments. Actually the principle is simple, the experience is very appealing. In the sound walk, I retraced the footsteps of an dark-haired woman. Listening to the instruction of the woman voice, and I saw the ice cream car and portraitists she's talking about. This is a amazing way to see what's the artist seeing, to hear what's she hearing, to feel what's she feeling, and in the end understand what's she thinking. Here's is the ice cream car and portraitists picture I took. Look, a portraitist was waving at me.

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In the journey of tracing the woman's footsteps, the pictures really help to get me into the story. My favorite story is that the author encounter a man when she's looking at the this picture below. The man said, the woman in the picture is like his mother who has long black hair. His mother left him and went to New York City when he was 7. His dad wouldn't let him talk to his mother, and was just sitting ing the kitchen, drinking. The man blamed his father for this, but now he realized how sad was he. And then the man asked author what time is it, he had to go back to the hotel, because his wife may come back soon. I saw the impact from one generation to the next generation. The leaving happened in the man's childhood make him more care about his wife and their happiness.

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There are so many information in the all journey. The local history, opera and gospel music. The other story moved me is the polo bear. The polo bear is like a slave, A man's suffering voice speaks for the polo bear and show us the history of the slavery. I also find many things changed since author's visitor in 2005. There is no pole bear in the park anymore. The last polo bear died in last year. They were too old. And this made me started to think, after the time went by, the pain will disappear, and  people can finally have a happy ending, just like the men who doesn't have a happy childhood, but he has a loving wife in the end.