The Final Product

How to exhibit?

I am thinking of creating an interactive table much like the example below but rather than using little view finders playing on the idea of a paper cup on a piece of string.

Sound Files

I have collected the sounds from four dominant points off of the girls mental maps. They are the girls home, the supermarket, the travelling route and the university. On listening to the different sound files I hope that other people will be able to comprehend where the sounds were recorded in the city by comparing them to their own mental maps.

Here I have posted the sounds, see what you think? Where do they take you?

In the home example you can hear faint music, a television, girls voices, a kettle boiling, a tap running...

In the supermarket example you can hear the constant beep beep beep of items being scanned...

In the travelling example you can hear cars driving past and traffic lights informing the girls when to cross...

In the university example you can hear lots of voices in discussion, lockers being shut, keys being typed...

At first I was a bit disappointed by the sound quality of my outdoor travelling files as the wind was incredibly strong each day I recorded and can be heard quite clearly drowning out other lesser noises.

Yet even though the sound is less clear it gives a better reading into the actual qualities that the girls were experiencing whilst travelling along their mental maps, it speaks of what the particular day was like, weather conditions and all.

After collecting the data I traced out the girls footsteps using illustrator. Each girl had a different colour and all the lines were drawn with a slight opacity so that the build up of any certain routine was able to be clearly read. From this activity it was obvious that the five girls have rather set routines which they rarely differed from and though all the girls had slightly different mental maps they still seemed to cross paths at a few of the same places quite often. It is these dominant points where all the girls mental maps meet which I now want to explore the sound qualities of.

Collecting Data

I have decided to trace the footsteps of five girls living under one roof to see how small (or potentially large) their mental maps are. I have made them little packages which include a set of instructions and a map for each day folded down to pocket size. On each day I ask the girls a different question relating to sound, by doing so I hope to get them more involved in the data collecting process and to ask them to consider more closely their sound surroundings.

The kinds of questions I ask them are...

What did you hear when you woke up today?

What did you hear whilst travelling today?

What did you hear whilst working today?

What did you hear when relaxing? (and are you relaxing!)

What noises were you startled by?

What did you overhear?

What did you hear when you went to sleep today?