I’m always intrigued by sound. Either with the emotional power of music — listening and writing — or with using soundscapes for telling stories. There’s something oddly cool with how we can use audio to capture our world. This past fall, I even did Sound Stories with my sixth graders. So I was interested in the launch of a project called Hear My Home, and I have been dipping in a bit at the start.
(By the way, the icon above is not the official project one. It is one I made for myself.)
The HearMyHome project is a research endeavor of sorts, as it run through a graduate program, but it is also an invitation to experience and share our worlds through sounds. This is taken from the homepage of the project:
Examining everyday people produced soundscapes, #hearmyhome inquires how hearing difference and listening to communities may re-educate the senses and attune us towards cultural difference. Ultimately developing materials that hear, recognize, and sustain community literacies and cultural rhetorics, #hearmyhome asks us to take heed of the frequencies and rhythms of culture as we architect, design, and teach towards more equitable landscapes for learning.
I’ve done four “sounds” so far and shared them out in the Twitter stream (with the #hearmyhome hashtag).
First, I took my dog out for a walk in the neighborhood.
Second, I captured some sounds of my son’s youth basketball game.
Third, I recorded my morning routine of juice and coffee.
Fourth, I was working on some guitar chords with a new app. Just playing around.
None of it is really special, and that’s the point. Capturing the sounds of everyday life, and then adding those sounds to a expanding mix of other everyday lives, has the potential to gather together an aural experience of our world.
Take a listen. And then maybe join in? There is a sign up for newsletters, but you can bounce in anytime with the #HearMyHome hashtag. There’s probably a Facebook page, too. I don’t know.
Peace (in the ear as reader, voice as writer),
Kevin