Sound

Thursday I went to the Distinguished Lecture at the Michigan Theater. Each Thursday of the U of M school year the School of Art and Design hosts a distinguished lecturer for the A&D students. These lectures are free and open to the public – sponsored by a number of folks with the main benefactor being Penny Stamps. The lectures are always interesting, sometimes thought provoking and usually inspiring.

January 14’s lecture was about sound. Stephanie Rowden is a local gal who is working in sound, both in installations and on the radio. If you listen to Michigan Radio, our NPR station, she’s part of the “Sounds of the State” project they’ve been running for several months. She’s also got a website with these 20 second clips. (www.soundsofthestate.org) She played lots of clips from many projects she’s worked on. There were two that I thought were quite fun.

One of the “Sounds of the State” was a clip recorded and submitted by a police officer on the west side of the state. While on duty, he recorded the Amtrak passenger train going through is town on the way to Kalamazoo. In his email he stated he was on duty and that the train was going slower that day. He knows because he measured its speed with his radar gun!

She also played a 2:30 minute clip she did with a couple of young girls. They went to a bicycle store and rang the bells on the bikes, talked about the sounds, imitated the sounds, and, at one point caught the attention of the old man running the store. He promptly kicked them out after inquiring about their project. Then the girls recorded their thoughts on him saying “He’s crabby”, “He didn’t get his eight hours of sleep”, “They should fire him”. Stephanie summed up the experience by saying something like “Things usually don’t go as planned. And when they don’t something wonderful happens.”

I hope something wonderful happens with you this week.

One Response to “Sound”

  1. Elizabeth says:

    Could not agree more – wonderful things often happen when things do not go as planned.