The recording process became an important part of the project because it changed how I paid attention to everyday environments. I recorded sounds in a private room, a university corridor and an underpass. Even though these are ordinary locations, I noticed that each environment had its own rhythm, texture and acoustic behaviour.
In the private room, I focused on quieter sounds such as room tone, distant movement, electrical hums and small domestic noises. The recordings felt intimate and controlled, with very little sonic unpredictability. In contrast, the corridor recordings were more connected to movement. Footsteps became sharper and more compressed in narrower parts of the corridor, while door sounds and reflections shifted depending on distance and speed of movement.
The underpass recordings were the most layered and unstable. Traffic rumble, distant movement, airflow and metallic resonance overlapped continuously. Unlike the room recordings, the environment could not be fully controlled or predicted. At first I found this frustrating because unexpected sounds kept interrupting the recordings, but later I realised these interruptions actually made the spaces feel more socially inhabited and alive.
Technically, I worked with stereo field recordings and paid attention to microphone distance, recording levels and environmental noise. In the underpass, sudden traffic peaks and low-frequency rumble were difficult to control, but these issues also influenced how I later edited and balanced the material.
One thing I noticed during the process was how differently I listened once I stopped trying to capture interesting sounds and instead focused more on atmosphere, resonance and subtle spatial details. The recording process also became a practical way of testing some of the spatial listening ideas discussed in my essay research.
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