Monthly Archives: February 2022

I used to study in the top floors of Willard Strait before Covid in these rooms blocked off by the door. Since it looks like it was closed off when I visited, I sat in the hallway instead, and noticed a lot of foot steps echo loudly from the lower floors. I’m not sure what it is about older buildings but it felt like the footsteps from 2 floors down were louder than my own, and I’m guessing the sounds might’ve amplified as they echoed upwards. It was also so quiet and since the door had a hole in it, I could hear the people on the other side turning pages of a book. Overall, it felt like from where I was that sounds from farther away were so much louder than if they were sourced from the same room as me due to the structure and material of the building. There was also an eerie humming noise that I couldn’t tell what the source was, but might’ve been a bunch of ambient noises that faded and echoed together, so it felt both quiet and not totally quiet in a creepy way.

For assignment 0 I was stuck at home during a blizzard, so I decided to go to our window that looks out on the street and listen to the noises of both the wind and my house. The unpredictable gusts of winds had two main sounds. One was a high pitched wailing of the air escaping past the rubber seams of the window. The other a bassy, whooshing sound. While I was focussing on the wind, I also decided to mess with my radiator. I turned it up and down quickly, releasing these blasts of steam that sounded very cool. Twisting the knob on the radiator made its own creaking noise.

I am on a bus Route 30 from Collegetown to north campus. The bus is a giant beast running in the snow; it squeaks softly in a very high pitch as it brakes on the slippery road. When the road becomes bumpy, its whole body trembles, and the windows shake heavily inside the frames, making sounds of a broken drum. Deep below that, the engine continuously roars like a satisfied big cat, which also gasps occasionally as if it has a runny nose. Humans and machines all talk inside the bus. Before each stop, a female voice says “stop requested” following a gentle beep. A passenger next to me is talking on his phone, and the driver is connecting to someone over the intercom. Sounds from their speakers were somewhat altered and missing a specific range, so they have a signature “machine-altered human voice.” Beyond that, I can hear female and male voices talking in different languages, and I am fascinated by how human have made all sounds they make meaningful.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XlgqgB_IfrQmc3lNqxwyT6iLnb1a3bt6

I spent ten minutes sitting, listening on the stairwell within the multi-level boiler room within the Plant Science building.  I was intrigued by the sheer presence of mechanical noise there — it’s loud but not harsh, and the many running boilers, pipes, and other machines whir collectively, each contributing another layer of sound to the room’s ambience.  While focusing on ‘deep listening,’ I found it difficult to truly discern where one layer of sound began and another ended — I believe this was because many running machines were two stories or more below where I sat; also, the metal pipes running over my head resonated and echoed the rumbling room, which served to further obscure the sounds’ origins.  Occasionally, some distant boiler would hiss out some steam, or another machine would whir to life — these sounds eventually blended in with everything else as my ears acclimated to them.  A very deep frequency provided a grounding and encompassing sense of weight and presence that made me feel small and somewhat out-of-place in a room whose purpose is so functional and without superfluity, as I sat, hidden, on the rusty stairwell.

I chose to listen in the entrance tunnel to my apartment complex in Ithaca. This setting possessed a certain liminal quality to it. The first thing that I noticed when walking in was the general ambience amplified by the archway’s walls. Bird song, wind, and the sound of heaters were broken up by the cars traveling up and down the hill. I felt I could hear the noise of the upcoming cars earlier than I would’ve normally, and the Doppler effect presented itself powerfully every time. People occasionally walked through, whispering incoherently to one another and never staying too long.

(I thought I took a picture last night when I did this activity, but I couldn’t find it in my camera roll.)

I am standing on Ho Plaza, just below McGraw tower. The main sound I hear is some sort of pitched drone, likely noise emitting from a building. Past that, I can hear cars driving far below. They sound like sweeps of white noise, and scatter in every direction. I can hear footsteps behind me, passing from my right ear to my left. Some faint conversation can be heard in front of me and to my right.