that it did not occur to me to embark on an exercise of this nature prior to some prompting by this fellow is a little surprising, i think.  or not; and, if not quite unfortnate either, is at any rate something i might hope to remedy.

by around 100127::1600 i made it to the edge of prospect park, at the lower tip of the western north/south vertical.  the goal here was to retrace my steps to a particular spot i’d visited a year+change before, where an illegal artistic gathering was held on one of the coldest nights of that winter.  the aim here was in part to scout for installation spots, and in part to recontextualize the sonic imprint left on me by my last visit.

after wandering in the woods for some time, i found the site: a paved path arching over a stream (fed by a small waterfall which was apparently called the “Lost and Found Waterfall”), extending in two directions with stone stairs branching off up a hill and massive smooth stones lining the sides.  contorted hills and not-extremely-dense foliage filled the immediate vicinity, but shortly beyond this were vast open fields, the perimeter of which slopes up before delimiting the park’s edge, forming the shape of a basin.

the following recording was made over ten minutes spent sitting on a stone at this site, with eyes closed and ears open.  the notes that follow, written immediately after, were an attempt to recollect and describe all that i heard during this time.

further discussion will follow soon.  there is too much more to say.

[DL :: 100127] / / parkbasin

// the accompanying written notes, literatim:

  • steady water noise behind & to the left dominating most of the mids & highs with a shape approximating a pattern but too transient or amorphous to put a finger on
  • Couldn’t count the planes overhead; huge resounding doppler-moans, scattered and reflected back at me by the sloping terrain on all sides.  Originating behind me & to the right; unclear whether they ever ended up in front of me as they crossed to the left – more like a cloud of plane-references scattered across various different portions of spatial and frequency spectra across time.  Some had notably loud resonant howls, but based on their comparatively quiet low-end, were likely smaller.
  • resonance of space?  or the vehicle?  it was never before an instinctual thought to me that the sound of a plane is as much the wind hitting it at high speed as it is a product of the engines.
  • Constant hum of traffic behind & to the right – car sounds are muffled by trees and distance, but they shake the entire park with their weight.  color, intensity, distribution all change across time but individual vehicles can’t be discerned.
  • Lots of the traffic noise is sub-audible, and, in conjunction with the upper harmonics and amplified by this basin amidst the hills, creates a sense of profound size and weight despite its “quiet” character.
  • distant train.  super heavy.  blew its whistle, filtered by distance and doppler shifted across many seconds.
  • at least one person walked past me, seemed to be a woman based on gait, walking briskly – exercise?  awkwardness?
  • did i hear another person walk down a trail to my left?  with all the spatial resonance and water noise, what might pass for even a fairly nearby scrape or shuffle could just as easily be a phantom of the data-rich waters, airs, and earths of this place.
  • the sound of wind is surprisingly absent, if you don’t count the inverse-wind that is the plane’s flight.  this might not be the case were there neither traffic nor babbling of brook.  there are no leaves in the trees, and the ones at my feet are largely shielded by trees and hillsides, so that when that one stray leaf did scrape its way across the path it presented itself more like a stick or piece of metal.  by the sound of it, it was pulled across the pavement on its tip, and stalled for some time before entering a proper tumble.