This is a soundscape that Angela Salerno and I did. A soundscape is where you take different sound clips, and put them all together in a way that it tells a story. This soundscape is to convey an emotion of optimism. You've got cheerful birds on top of eerie music, a baby laughing when a couple is kissing, and an overall theme that goes from dark to bright. Enjoy!
This soundscape throws a curveball at the beginning because the dark images and sounds lead me to believe it is a negative emotion. By utilizing contrast and affinity through the manipulation of sound and images, the end result of optimism ultimately comes through. The sound of a baby was an excellent choice for optimism, as many expectant parents can attest to. This was one of the better examples of a soundscape that I've seen.
ReplyDeleteAndrew's soundscape on "Optimism," is insightful and inspiring because it best depicts optimism in the midst of difficulties and hardships. Aurally, we hear this with darker and sometimes eerie sound effects. A low instrumentation signaled meloncholy and despairing moods. However, midway through his soundscape, we hear a child's laughter, and the mood changes from slow, depressing and sad to upbeat and cheerful. The imagery also goes from lighter to darker, starting with a woman drowning and ending with balloon-faced men, floating in a bright, blue sky. Like life, we have moments where we're surrounded by difficult situations, but in the end, if we maintain the optimism, we, too can be balloon-faced men, floating in a bright, blue sky. Some of the concepts I noticed were Andrew's manipulation of time, starting with a slow, dragging sad song (making the soundscape seem longer) and ending with an upbeat, cheerful song (making the soundscape move quickly through). Also, Andrew's manipulation of space can be heard with the certain sound effects chosen. With the darker ones in the beginning, it seemed like one was making an ascension from underwater to the sky, as the mood moved from sad to happy. I thought Andrew's soundscape was entertaining, innovative, and overall original. To make two soundscapes within one is completely genius. Good job, bro!
ReplyDeleteThis soundscape took a couple times to hit me with what emotion it was trying to portray but I finally got it. I am a big fan of how the soundscape starts out very dark and scary and then transfers into a more joyful sound. I also liked how in the beginning the soundscape has multiple layers to help build up some tension. The soundscape manipulated the space in the first picture by having a deep large echo feel. Having the waves with a deep rumble under sound makes the listener feel alone and the feeling of being lost. When the transition from dark and scary to happy and joyfulness hit at first it confused me. The soundscape did a good job of portraying Gestalt’s Principle of Dissimilar. The soundscape does this when the picture of the couple kissing is shown and the sound of a baby is heard. This sound is not what you would think of when you first see a picture of a couple kissing. The listener is drawn to the baby sounds. The emotion the soundscape was trying to get across was optimism. I felt that this was a very hard emotion to try to portray in a soundscape. The soundscape did a very good job with portraying optimism especially in the picture where the couple is kissing and the baby is heard.
ReplyDeleteThis soundscape gave many illusions throughout the song with both the pictures and the sound. Sounds followed matched the illusion the pictures perfectly. The sound of the water is given at the beginning by giving the song little swishing sounds. There is a baby crying during the picture with the woman floating, but it starts laughing as the pictures become happier. So even though there is no baby actually ever shown, the baby’s sounds are used to give the illusion of the feelings coming off of the pictures. The creator of this soundscape gave an illusion of sadness turned to cheerfulness.
ReplyDeleteThere was a sense of space give from the echo that started at the beginning, and the fading in of the sounds. The representation of time is showed by the tempo changing throughout the song. It gets faster throughout the song. It starts out quite slow and then just gets faster and faster by adding one instrument and then adding a band. This happens because as the instruments are added the more faster the instruments play. This creates a size by adding distance at first with the one instrument but becoming closer each time an instrument is added. All of these things created a space in the song.
I really liked the way this soundscape started out. With the contrast between the calm and serene opening notes and the weird, space-y sounds immediately following, contrasting each other, it was very interesting. This obviously falls under the Gestalt Principles of contrast and affinity. The crying baby also contrasts the calmness of the beginning, by repeating in our ears. I liked how it went back and forth between sounding kind of happy and kind of confusing.
ReplyDeleteThere was definite use of space in this soundscape. There were many layers, which made the depth much more noticeable. I found myself constantly focusing on one layer and then another, because there were several to choose fro. There was also a use of echo to make the space seem deeper and wider. Also, faster instruments were added onto slower instruments and this creates size by blending them together. As different sounds faded in and out, more depth, size and width were added.
The third soundscape is by Angela Salerno and Andrew Cooke. The space of the song makes it feel like it is all around you. The sound alternates earphones to make it feel like you are surrounded. Also there is an echo that makes me feel as if I am in a cave or large room. The time of the song ranges from slow to fast. The song starts out slow with the sound effects and picks up the speed when the instrumentation comes on in the background. The baby/grownup laughing in the background keeps the beat of the song. For the most part it peaks at evenly spaced intervals. I like this song because it emphasized the sound effects and made you feel like you were in the song. The pictures go perfectly with the soundscape. When the baby cries and there is the light sound of waves in the there is a picture of a woman floating in water. I don't know if they meant it but this could mean that someone of importance to the baby has gone away. Yet its laughter could mean that the person is just doing funny movements in the water to make the baby laugh. When the song brings in the instrumentation the picture changes to men with balloons for heads. The music goes along with the feeling that the world is make believe.
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