Natural Construction – Combining Natural and Mechanical Sounds

The two main components of my final project are my homemade audio and the video that corresponds to it. When making the audio, I wanted to create something super simple that could be remade almost anywhere. This is because thinking back to the Providence River and the sounds that surrounded it, everything was very accessible. These types of sounds could be heard everywhere and if we were still at school they would have been available to everyone. By recreating the phenomenon I hoped to achieve the same feeling I would have felt walking downtown by the canal in my own home. I started by collecting natural sounds like birds chirping, water flowing from the creek behind my backyard, and leaves rustling in the wind. I edited these in Reaper to make sure that each sound file would have equal presence in the final audio. I then focused on collecting my mechanical sounds. I wanted these to be simple sounds made from objects found around my house to show that anyone could remake this audio. Once these were together I combined them with the natural sounds in Reaper to create my final product. Next task was using this audio in some type of installation. I immediately thought about my backyard and how almost all of my nature sounds had originated from there. I wanted to capture myself listening to my homemade audio in the space of my backyard to further my idea that this project could be done by anyone. Anyone could remake this experience in their own backyard if they wanted to. To add to this I opted to include clips showing how I recorded my mechanical sounds serving as a tutorial in the same space I was listening in.