What is “Sound walk”? The sound walk is a
practice of focused listening in which one moves through an environment with
complete attention to sound.
I.
While I was doing our audio interview, I
realized that it is really challenge to find an absolutely quite place in
Hunter building. Various sounds became the noise to me; the sound from people’s
walking and chatting, elevators…etc. I barely pay attention to sounds when I
walk. It is more like I am careless of the sounds from street, because I
personally love listening to music while walking. I think I've never listened
carefully the sounds from streets as I walk along. It’s more like the
background sounds to me, unless the random sirens penetrate my headphone and
into my ears; that is more like noise. I feel annoyed by those sounds such as
the cars driving by, also screeching from brakes, and sometimes car honks,
ambulance sirens. Since, I’m addicted to plugging my ears to music that I love
to listen to. I guess I try to isolate myself from all the sounds thus I would
cut off myself from the outside world for little moment.
II.
It was an ordinary day of school, and the
weather was nice and warm. I decided to take a walk, and this time I took off
my headphone from my ears. I was walking down to school from 3rd Avenue and 81st
street to Lexington Avenue and 68th Avenue- It was the same route that I used
to walk to school every day when I lived in Upper East Side. Now I am sharing
the experience of the sound marks in the Upper East Side.
As soon as I started walking, I heard a
random sound that came out from a baby’s mouth; not a cooing but sort of
mumbling that I couldn't understand, but the mom of the baby was response to
her with a gentle voice tone. Then I walked from narrow ally towards to a wide
Avenue. The first thing caught my attention was that all the sounds from cars
on the street mostly dominant over all the sounds that I could hear. I heard
the sound of engine brakes from trucks and cars as they stopped for loading or
at the traffic lights. Also the buses made the squeaking sound as they stopped
to take on passengers, and made the tires screeching sound when they pulled out
the bus stop. The sounds from cars are “Keynotes” during all over the sound walk. As I walked along with the Avenue, I heard
not only cars honking but also random conversations. People were talking,
laughing, and some of them were chattering on their phones when they walked
past me.
Subsequently, I heard the jingle-jangle
sound of bells and food steps of something in distance, so I gazed front and I
saw a women who waking towards me with her leashed dogs. They stopped to
urinate and started walking away in a fast pace footsteps. Soon after that, I
heard the sounds of whirling wheels, but I didn't know what it was, so I look
in the direction of the sound; there were two people in their skates and a bike
flashed by me. When I was waiting to across the street, there is a car stopped
right in front of me to wait for the signal to change, were blasting a loud
music. I couldn't recognize what the song was that were playing in a car. As
the sound grew fainter and fainter in the distance, I heard a sound made by a
woman who is pushing her stroller, and walking towards me.
All the way to school, I could hear the
flip-flops walk along with dragging feet, and there were tip-tap sounds of
shoes on the pavement. Continuously, I heard the crinkling sounds of shopping
bags and plastic bags by people as they passed by me. Once in a while, I heard
an ambulance siren in the distance. When I walked close to school I heard the
pigeons were flapping their wings and chirping. As I walked into school
building the sounds from cars became less noisy. I started to hear students’
shouting and chatting. I heard them laughing. Then, I finished my sound walk
journey.
III.
