Blogs Round 3

Stop.Look.Listen

I attended the exhibit at the Haggerty art museum. I watched a number of the videos, but the two I found the most interesting were Janet Bigg's "Predator and Prey" and Salla Tykka's "Cave Trilogy". In the "Predator and Prey" video, I enjoyed the rhythmic sound of the horse galloping. It sounded like it was on some kind of hollow surface because it had kind of an echo to it. I also recall hearing a bell on the eagle's legs that kept jingling everytime he would move or try and fly. On the other spectrum, there was more of a calm, soothing experience set by the underwater scenes where we saw a polar bear and later on a person swimming around under the water. The sound was fairly slow and quiet. So it was kind of a jump to go from the rhythmic galloping, to soothing underwater sounds, to chaotic bells jingling. I also saw the film "Cave Trilogy" which was very appealing to me. It was interesting that there was no dialogue, it sort of left the storyline a little bit up to yourself. There was few sound effects, but mostly the music within the work was the driving force. It was all familiar songs that we have heard in famous movies. There was three sections, she called them "Western", "Thriller", and "Cave". The only song I could tell you exactly where it was from was the "Halloween" theme song that played in "Thriller". There was a very eerie feeling in this section. I think an artist could show you the happiest scene they could think of, but make it entirely eerie by adding a song like that to it. I believe it was in "Cave", when there was this very familiar song in it that sounded rather happy; something you would expect to hear at the end of a movie that contained one of those "happy endings" we all love. It was kind of odd to me because nothing very exhilirating happened--the character ran out of the cave onto the beach and I believe this was when the song started to play. It just seemed so out of place. I recall reading something about Tykka's work in the museum how she wanted to envoke this feeling of memory in the audience, she wanted the viewer to remember memories of their own. The only time I thought of memories of my own was when the music was playing. I specifically recall hearing the songs in "Thriller" and recalling times I've spent with my best friend in middle school watching horror movies in autumn and playing in her backyard. I think that songs have this really strong power of doing that for someone in recalling memories. I can't think of a song that doesn't bring back a memory, either small or large, when I hear it playing. In Glenn Bach's panel discussion on D2L, they discuss sounds relating to memory. Glenn talks about sounds of a washing machine being a very strong childhood memory for him. He mentions how sound is neutral and "it doesn't have any say in how it's going to be interpreted." We as people define what sounds mean to us; it depends how we were brought up. Certain sounds or songs or voices that we have heard at strong emotional points in our life are going to have more of an impact on us rather than sounds we just heard once in awhile in our past. I can say that one sound that brings back memories for me is the sound of race cars or cars driving past really fast. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and my dad would take my brother and I to the Plymouth races in the summer.