Credit: Samantha Schulman & myself
You hear a rumor about an abandoned building deep into what used to be the heart of the city, but what is now long forgotten about. People have heard strange noises coming from inside, but most are too spooked to investigate further. There are warning signs of death and destruction plastered to the outside of the building. Whatever is inside, the rumor goes, you do not want to find out.
Curiosity has gotten the best of you, and there is no choice but to see for yourself how far fetched the rumor has become. You get off the train into the cross section of abandoned streets and follow the gray and black scenery down the road. An explosion of color suddenly emerges out in front of you, as you have arrived at your destination. A low hum escapes out of one of the broken windows. Already some tension has left you, as the building is not the terrifying image that the rumors have projected, but rather almost playful and whimsical. The sign of death above the door does not turn you around, and as you pry it open, the hum from inside grows more apparent.
Inside it is dark, except for a dim flickering in the distance. You walk towards the only light and the hum begins to gain clarity – it is more than a hum – you think it is a song! Now you are following the light and the sound, a story from a foreign world it seems. A little further and you have reached a small beam of light, playing the low tune from a speaker below. Interesting, but not all that exciting. Not worth the hype.
You are about to turn around disappointed when you decide to first reach out your hand and break the constant stream of light. You jump backwards a foot in surprise – the entire building becomes illuminated in flashing color and has been completely immersed with the song – the sounds now booming in high octave from every direction! In a flicker of light you see a figure in the opposite corner – is someone else here with you!?! Curiosity outshines the terror and you run towards the human-like shape, music still blasting from the stereos. Your heart is pounding as you get closer and notice tentacles coming off of the figure. There is a monster inside, you are now sweating and your mind is racing with fear and confusion!!
And then you stop. You break into a relief of laughter. The monster is a hologram! Projected in front of you is the holographic image of an alien holding a small baby. The surrounding lights turn off and the alien begins to caress the baby. The song ends, there is a pause, and it starts over – you look closely and see that the alien appears to be singing the song to its baby – an electronic variation of love.
Debriefing
I wanted to record unique sounds that would elude an “alien” feel. I thought quirky electronics would do just that, and so I decided to head to an arcade. I ended up going to Dave & Buster’s to record. Something I didn’t anticipate was the amount of ambient noise in such an environment – all of my recordings ended up caked with a thick ambient layer of loud music, hums, dings, bleeps, yells and laughter of all sorts. A shotgun mic would have better suited recording in this type of environment.
This was my first experience working collaboratively on a sound piece. Our plan was for one of us to individually compose the piece, then send it along to the other for them to iterate on the entire composition, then repeat the process once more. We figured this would allow both of us to equally influence the final product in a cohesive way. We had miscalculated how long each iteration of this process would take, and ended up each only touching the piece once. I think this process works best when it’s repeated several times, which is what I’d plan to do next time.