{"id":4851,"date":"2013-01-03T18:39:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-03T18:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=4851"},"modified":"2013-01-03T18:39:02","modified_gmt":"2013-01-03T18:39:02","slug":"happy-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=4851","title":{"rendered":"Happy New Year!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a very great pleasure to read all your comments on the Sonic Wallpaper Advent Calendar<\/a> posts.<\/p>\n

Sonic Wallpaper<\/em> is about using sound to expand on wallpaper as a specifically domestic and everyday material; about using sound to accentuate memories and associations with places and specific types of architecture; about honouring and celebrating the everyday conversations that we have about wallpaper; (“that would be far too busy in our living room; but imagine it on the stairs!”) and about expanding how we normally think about this material to include an aural or listening dimension. It was my intention that the sound pieces and all the sounds recorded for the project would trigger viewers’ own memories about wallpapers they had used or seen, and open up new ways of interpreting or exploring existing wallpapers (such as those in the MoDA Wallpaper collection<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Gauging the success or failure of any art project is a tricky but necessary business with many factors to take into account, but your comments have been extremely heartening for me to read, and have led me to believe the project has at least achieved some of what I had hoped it might. <\/p>\n

Thank you all very much for listening, reading, writing and thinking here.<\/p>\n

Your comments are so full of wallpaper\/memory\/sonic detail that I am republishing some of them here, to save readers trailing back through all 24 Advent Calendar<\/a> posts to find all your rich Sonic Wallpaper<\/em> writings. <\/p>\n

I especially liked reading Jen<\/a>‘s detailed description of her morning soundscape – the ‘tinging’ of the metal woodstove and the crackling of a fire:<\/p>\n

Oak burning, and \u2018crackling\u2019 in the woodstove next to me. The stove itself is heating up, and the metal (joints and such) is expanding and \u2018tinging\u2019 a bit. I just heard the oven gas go on to bring the chamber up to 200degreeF temperature, as I\u2019m lightly toasting some raw almonds. I hear a buzz, I think it\u2019s in my ears, but could very possibly be a vibration from the refrigerator, or the water heater.. or it\u2019s just my head filling in the washover from all the distracting household sounds of early morning. Clock ticking too. My own breathing. It’s only getting light out, so no ravens out yet\u2026 making their usual riot.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Jen<\/a><\/p>\n

Julie’s comment is also full of sounds and textures; Tweetie Pie’s tiny feet on the ceiling and the brushing of paste onto paper. I wonder if the wallpaper type she describes is woodchip? I can’t remember off the top of my head whether or not this particular bit of interview made it into the final Sonic Wallpaper<\/em> edits, but someone else mentioned in the interviews that one of the textured wallpapers reminded them of their Dad swearing in frustration at trying to hang the stuff:<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t recall what this \u201cwallpaper\u201d was called \u2013 the name is on the tip of my tongue \u2013 but it was that white textured paper that you then painted over.
\nMy Dad hung it on the ceiling of the front room\/living room (my, this is like time travel to the distant past!) A small child version of me \u201chelped\u201d him. There was \u201creal\u201d wallpaper on the walls (stripey stuff) but that didn\u2019t intrigue me nearly as much as the paper that you stuck up\u2026AND THEN PAINTED!!!!<\/p>\n

So the first sounds I associate with that paper are brushing of paste and sounds of going up and down a ladder, and my Dad trying not to swear in front of me!<\/p>\n

Then the sound of my childhood pet, Tweetie Pie the Budgie (whose cage was in that room) making his budgerigar sounds. Most particularly (because it also involved Dad trying not to swear) when Tweetie got out of his cage, he would fly up to the pelmet board and run from end to end to avoid re-capture. His little tapping feet were right up there beside the paper on the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Perhaps children just spend more time gazing up, but that ceiling always intrigued me. Thanks for the visit back in time.<\/p>\n

Oh, and I wonder how many children can remember the design of the wallpaper, the corner of which they tweaked up so that they could leave a secret message underneath!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Julie<\/p>\n

I thought this line, from Janet, was also really evocative and to me indicates how familiar we become with certain spaces and surfaces; “a house I lived in a few years ago had a peeling, sun marked, fake brick wall paper in the entrance hall.”<\/p>\n

Finally, Chris’s comments here is full of sounds and textures – again, the sounds of fire and a grate feature, and the description of the muffled thud produced by a bucket full of ash is perfect – you can hear it just reading her words:<\/p>\n

This project is the best at rubbing the visual environment against a sound to find a memory.<\/p>\n

Once there was some greenish flock on a pale cream paper. It was Georgian, in a 1970s way, and lived in a sitting room that remembered being a kitchen to a darker, more Victorian house.<\/p>\n

For a long time the range had been silent but after noise, dust and general upheaval there was again a fire in the grate of an evening which every morning needed to be renewed.<\/p>\n

The old range had the sharp ring of cast iron moving over ash. The new fireplace with its chrome surround had a deep ash bucket which could be removed with a muffled, replete thud.<\/p>\n

A fresh fire would arrive soon.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Chris<\/p>\n

I also appreciated Colleen’s<\/a> comment here<\/a>, in which she remarks especially on mixing the actual<\/em> culinary din of her washing up and morning coffee rituals with my recorded<\/em> culinary din, composed to accompany BADDA 4774 in the MoDA Wallpaper collection.<\/p>\n