Flow of Life (Footsteps)

My sound piece reflects upon the continuous flow of life and how one would experience it by standing still and observing people in their mundane tasks. I wanted to portray life as a straight path in which people move to get to their destinations. To achieve this, I planned to sit and listen in one spot for several minutes and record sounds of people walking and engaging in conversations as they passed by in various locations. My goal for this project was to create an environment in which one would experience the feeling of stopping in time and observing various sounds of footsteps and voices of people passing by as a way of experiencing the flow of life.

In terms of process, I went to various spots in Calgary that would allow me to record people walking and talking in a linear path. I tried to achieve this by recording sounds in hallways and parts of malls in which people are inclined to walk in straight paths. I placed the sound recording device on the floor to capture the sounds of footsteps because I discovered through experimentation that this produced more efficient sounds of footsteps. While I was recording, I read a book so that I would never visually see the people walking. I became aware of how my sense of hearing was elevated by simply removing my sense of sight.

It was an interesting experience to conduct this project because it allowed me the opportunity to listen to sounds I was never aware of. I started to experience the fleeting conversations of people, which reminded me of randomly flipping channels on the television. I also became aware of various manners of walking. Since I was reading a book avoiding to look at the passers by, I began to imagine a variety of people in relation to their manner of walking and through the conversations they were engaged in. Also, when I would place and remove the sound recorder from the floor, I would often look up and discover the weird looks that were on the people’s faces when they saw what I was doing. Overall, it was a fun process that may lead and influence the creation of future projects.