KAILA SPENCER

KAILA SPENCER

THE PLUMBING AT MY HOUSE

2013

4:28

My everyday sound piece addresses the intricate subtleties of daily ritual. Nothing is more "everyday" to me than my daily environment. I live in a house with 6 other people and three animals so in order create a sound experience of my everyday, I recorded their various activities and movements. Observing the actions of the people and creatures that I live with was quite revealing. 

Once I had a jumble of noise and conversation, I eliminated some sounds and brought the piece down to a minimal composition of the subtlest noises. Within the silence and the quiet, yet recognizable sounds, is the music of everyday. Amongst my roommates, ritual is common, from their various addictions, to the creative hobbies. For me, creating art is an everyday occurrence, particularly with spray paint. The recording of the spray can that I took inspired me to structure my piece like a musical composition. However I didn’t want to create a song. The final product is not quite musical yet has musical elements like a repeating chorus, bridge, and beat. Some sounds are personal to me, as only I will understand them. The crashing of the screen door the constantly rings through the household, the whimper of my whiny dog etc.

After reading on recent films by Gabriel Orozco, I decided to approach the project in the same way he approaches his films. By simply walking along until he sees something that intrigues him. The artists in the everyday often approach filmmaking in this way, allowing simple things in everyday life to intrigue them to the point where they become interesting. I left my recording device in three different areas to capture sound. I left it near the cat’s area, in the hallway and underneath my car. I also recorded sounds on purpose: some light ukulele strumming, beer cans opening and drinking and other activities that occur in my household daily. 

Using a combination of environment acoustics and effects I brought out the echoes and dimensions of some sounds and suppressed others. I wanted there to be some video but only to fill the screen and not to add any distraction to the real focus of my piece: the sounds. For this reason I left the final minute unaccompanied by video so that the audio could be reflected on by itself. During my recording day, I picked up many sounds that I would only notice upon replaying. I was also surprised at how much silence I ended up with.  My piece addresses the theme of the everyday by exposing the musical repetition of daily life as well as the random little details in everyday life through their sounds.

The software I used included iMovie and Garageband, both of which I used for editing. The hardware I used was a canon xa20 and an external microphone. The video in this piece was recorded separate to the audio.