For this project, I sat in the grass behind a table actively advertising for about ten minutes. I was sitting on the Doherty Hall side of the edge of the fence, near the clock on the corner of the walkway. I recorded from about 11:00am until 11:10am on Tuesday, November 4th.
Because I was in front of the fence, the sounds of people chatting behind me at the fence picnic tables and as they walked by on the sidewalk in front of me were audible along with the boys at the table shouting their advertisements. To my left a man with a leaf blower was sweeping up leaves, and someone was practicing a trumpet in CFA which I could hear through an open classroom window. Above all of that, it was pretty windy, and the sounds of the wind sometimes drowned out the softer sounds to my ears, though it was not that distracting or overwhelming. In the recording, however, the sounds of the leaf blower and the wind drowned out the sounds of people’s voices almost completely. The obtrusiveness of these sounds was not nearly as apparent or noticeable when I was listening myself. In the recording, I can also hear the sounds of a truck backing up early on, which wasn’t as noticeable when I was sitting on the grass myself. When I was listening, I picked up on more subtle sounds, because they were more interesting than constant-sounding louder sounds, and my attention was more focused on picking up the softer sounds. In the recording, the microphones pick up sound based on volume, and the more interesting sounds fade to the background in the face of the wind and the leaf blower.
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