Week 3 - The sonic enviroment

To start the third week we looked at the semiotics of sound. The semiotics of a sound is the chain of meaning behind a sound. An example of this we looked at was the sound of a smoke alarm. When a smoke alarm goes off we think smoke, smoke conveys there must be fire and from fire, we make the decision to run away. Through cultural code, we have invested this particular sound with a meaning, Similar to the context behind voices cultural experience leads us to explicitly interpret a sound.

Three keywords were also the topic of this week 3 lecture:

Biophonies  - Non - human sounds produced by living organisms in a specific environment. e.g. land, sea, air etc. Biophonies are affected by temporal/locational factors.

Anthraphonies - The actions/movement of artificial objects e.g. machinery, bells, cars etc.

Geophonies - Sounds produced by natural agents e.g. rain, avalanches, volcanoes, thunderstorms etc.

There are of course sounds that don't fit in to these categories but they still have meaning. We look to find connections and relationships between different sounds and their sources/origins which can perhaps lead to new and interesting ideas.

This week we were given a theme to create an audio piece too. The theme being desolation/loneliness. My partner an I created a piece around mental health. We attempted to create what is going through someone's head when suffering from an illness such as anxiety or depression.


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