November and examining the familiar
An essay I return to again and again in my studies is ‘Concerning the objects on my table‘ by Georges Perec. Other texts I have enjoyed recently are Nicholson Baker’s A Box of Matches, and Xavier de Maistre’s A Journey round my Room. As sound-diary makers, we can learn much from the attentive way that the immediate and the everyday are attended to in these texts. For instance Nicholson Baker describes sounds in the context of his daily routine, and in particular, the sound of a freight-train that passes his house every day at around 4.20a.m. As the book progresses, this sound comes to be significant to his understanding of his day. It is as though in noting and becoming conscious of it, the sound has grown in importance and relevance to Baker.
This process of documenting and noting the significance of everyday sounds reminds me of Peter Cusack’s project, Your Favourite London Sounds, which also provides a kind of alternative tourist view of London, offering insights into the familiar and intimate soundscape of Londoners.
This makes me think of the places where I live and where I work, and of how it might be possible to document those places.
I wonder whether it is possible to make something which - like Nicholson Baker’s descriptions of freight-train whistles, or de Maistre’s celebratory words about the birds which live in the elms outside his room - may evoke for all visitors, tourists or inhabitants of these spaces, the imaginative, sonic dimensions of them…
For anyone studying sounds at Brookes the sight of these doors and the worn, grey plastic flooring beneath them will be familiar visions. Additionally, you might associate this image with the particular swishing sound that this door makes. There is a distinctive shudder of wood when these doors move, and they close with a lurching, squeaky halt.
The grey surface of the floor reacts fractiously with trainers to produce a comical squeak, and the long, bare corridors amplify the movements of all the people who traverse them daily. Regular sounds include the swish of various textiles rustling with the motion of walking, and the bustling, magnified footsteps of Oxford Brookes students and staff.
There are also amazing contrasts to be found between different architectural corners of the building. Consider, for instance, the sonic contrast between the wide, echoey space at the top of the stairs above the foyer in the Richard Hamilton Building and the tiny lift with its tin-box acoustics and gristly mechanisms.
These are just a scattering of the sounds which inhabit this building, and they are the things that initially stand out to me… but I am interested in hearing how the building sounds to the other people who use it, and in documenting those sounds.
So there will hopefully be many posts during the month of November on the theme of the sounds of the Richard Hamilton Building. There has been talk of maybe organising some kind of floor-plan with markers, so that visitors can locate and map various sounds of the building, and this shall be collated at the end of the month, once we have a fine collection of sounds to represent upon it.
But in the meantime, expect to read the words of and hear the recordings of many guest writers on this blog, who have sonic insights to share on their experiences of the Richard Hamilton Building at Oxford Brookes.
Like Perec investigating his table, Cusack, investigating his city, de Maistre investigating his room and Nicholson investigating his morning rituals, we are exploring the immediate space that we share and becoming - for a month - tourists in our own workplace.
Tags: Documentation, everyday sounds, listening, Nicholson Baker, Rituals, Sounds, Xavier de Maistre