MICHAEL DAVIS

MICHAEL DAVIS

“EveryNight”

2014

4:47

EveryNight is a soundscape utilizing field recordings taken at various times at night on various days over a span of a month.  The experience is a aural nocturnal journey through everyday nightlife.

EveryNight was conceived as project to answer my own question of everyday. I have been a nightowl from a young age with the first few jobs I ever worked being third shifts, this schedule has stayed with me and my interest in nightlife I felt was a perfect venue to explore the everyday, things I experience on a daily basis.          

The work was recorded on various nights spanning from the hours of 7pm to 2am. The work is edited using these field recordings in a manner reminiscent of Musique concrète compositions. The work is a loose “narrative” in that the listener moves over time through different sounds to a climax and eventual end point.

I looked to other field recording work to draw inspiration and structure as I went about recording and then editing the piece, Westerkamp, Ferrari and Tsunoda were some of my favorites we looked through during the semester. I looked at each artist's body of work taking queues on organization, structure and recording when I went about creating my own piece. 

Visually I made a thrice rephotographed video piece consisting of various scenes I shot. The process for this would be to project the image and the record the projection over and over with various settings and filters to affect the image. Lucier’s  audio “I am sitting in a room” is a comparison to understand the visual process, keep creating video generations until only the movement and color remain. The goal with the visuals was to create a compliment to the auditory as opposed to something that overpowers it.