Author: Luojing Zhang

1. Reflection on the Listening/Memory Exercise

During this week’s listening and memory exercise, I realized how deeply sound is intertwined with personal memory and material tactile experiences. When listening to specific close-up textures, sound acts almost like a trigger—it doesn’t just present a physical space, but instantly pulls up emotional fragments and bodily memories from the past. This reinforced my interest in micro-material sound textures: sound is never neutral; it carries the weight of memory, intimacy, and personal history.

2. Preparing a “Political Sound” Example for Next Week

For next week’s session on political sounds, I am thinking of bringing the sound of a public protest chant overlapping with the digital shutter sound of surveillance cameras (or state-controlled broadcast noise). This contrasts the collective voice of civil resistance with the acoustic architecture of institutional control, exploring how public spaces and soundscapes are contested territories where politics and power dynamics are constantly negotiated.

For this week’s exercise, I wanted to turn my attention away from prominent environmental sounds and zoom into the microscopic acoustic details that usually go completely unnoticed in a bustling public space. I chose to record myself eating yogurt in the canteen. In a loud, dynamic environment filled with chatter, clattering cutlery, and footsteps, the intimate sound of a spoon scraping against plastic, the subtle viscosity of the yogurt, and the delicate wet textures of swallowing are entirely masked. By recording and amplifying these tiny sounds, I wanted to explore the boundary between public and private space, and how close-up microphone placement can completely alter our perception of an ordinary action.

1. Core Concept & Artistic Focus

 Topic: Micro-material Sound Textures

 Concept:

 I want to focus on tiny, everyday tactile sounds that people usually ignore—like close-miking the sound of tearing old cardboard boxes, crumpling plastic packaging, or scratching rough fabric with fingernails.

 Why this topic: I’m interested in how we are losing touch with physical, handmade materials in our digital lives. Here, sound isn’t just background noise; it’s a way to capture the texture and memory of materials.

2. How it Connects to an Audio Essay

 Sound Material + Spoken Word:

 Technically, I’ll use Logic Pro or Pro Tools to pitch, EQ, and add a bit of spatial reverb or granular synthesis to these everyday noises to make them sound hyper-real.

 Structurally, I won’t just play the raw sounds. I’ll mix them with a short, personal voiceover talking about material culture and tactile memory, so the sound and the voice work together as my argument.

3. Aspirational Notes & Aims for the Unit

 Deconstruct the Medium:

 Instead of writing a traditional text-based essay, I want to use sound collages and soundscapes to “write” an essay using audio.

 Expand Technical & Conceptual Boundaries:

 Get better at close-miking techniques and using DAW plugins to turn tiny, ordinary sounds into something immersive and striking.

 Critical Engagement:

 Connect the readings we do in class directly to my own recording and editing experiments, seeing how sound theory actually works in practice.

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