In
her soundscape ‘A Journey in London Zoo’,
Feng presents an integrated aural immersion experience in London Zoo to explore
the relationship between the sound, the space and the listener. Inspired by
Hildegard Westerkamp’ s soundwalk which depicts different areas of Queen
Elizabeth Park (Uimonen, 2011), Feng’ s soundscape follows a coherent mainline,
that is the park lot, the penguin beach, the stream, the bird safari, indoor
zoo, the downhill and outdoors. With orchestrations of outdoor and indoor
sounds in London Zoo, Feng explores and creates a sense of spatial dimension
(Sonnenschein, 2001). Sonnenschein (2001) argues that the
sound influences and is influenced by the environment. In her soundscape, particularly,
the indoor reverberation indicates the size of an indoor space. Listeners’
perception of space, such as the size and material, is connotated by the
variation of sounds on the loudness strength, timbre, distance and direction,
which creates the actuality to motivate listeners listen actively in a mixture
of reduced and casual listening modes (Michel Chion, 1994).
As
a whole, this soundscape is an interweave of natural and social sounds composed
of keynote sounds, signals, soundmarks, and archetypal sounds, which create
rich soundscapes as well. Natural sound is employed in most of keynote and
archetypal sounds in outdoor zoo, which brings listeners a relaxing auditory
experience and awakes their memory in a wide range of emotional space. The
narrative of this soundscape is complete with a good closure. At the end of the
soundscape, the speaker announces that the zoo (soundmark) will be closing,
which brings listeners a site-specific sonic experience and also creates a
sense of the spatio-temporal.
In
Feng’s interview project, it is an informal and traditional Radiogenic phone-in
type interview with an international student about study abroad experience on
Brighton Radio. The form of phone-ins helps cost cutting and establish closer
and more interactive rapport with listeners as well (Shingler and
Wieringa, 1998). With casual listening mode, the signal of telephone
ringing is followed by the action of answering the phone. (Michel Chion, 1994)
Based
on the content and style of its speech, the target audience are young
international students and local students who would like to get closer to their
life.
Because
this radio talk is targeted at young people between the ages of 18 and 25, the
speech and the musical background always moves at a faster pace (Starkey,
2004). The tone-used is light-hearted and
sometimes it is injected with some human emotions, such as the surprise. This
broadcast programming is aired during the time period of morning, which is
beneficial to attract young people and also conforms to vital pace.
As
for the speech package, Feng’s interview mixes the open and closed questions
for detailed information and confirmation separately (Starkey, 2004).
The narrative is complete not only as the mixture of the speech and the music
fade out together, but also as the music happens to end, which provide a
punctuation mark to create the aural full to the audience(Starkey, 2004). Additionally,
the actuality shaped by the real-life experience of the interviewee plays a
role in education, which is reinforced by the speech particularly the introduction
and summary in an intermediate voice. Moreover, if there were more variations
on the diversity of voices, this radio talk would be more vital to keep
listeners’ attention.
Words:
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Reference:
Chion,
M. and Murch, W. (1994) Audio-vision:
Sound on screen. Edited by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Shingler,
M. and Wieringa, C. (1998)
On air: Methods and meanings of radio.
New York: Hodder Arnold.
Sonnenschein,
D. (2001) Sound design: The expressive
power of music, voice, and sound effects in cinema. Seattle, WA: Wiese,
Michael Productions.
Starkey,
G. (2004) Radio
in context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Uimonen,
H. (2011) Everyday Sounds Revealed:
Acoustic communication and environmental recordings. UK: Cambridge
University Press
Soundcloud address: https://soundcloud.com/zijuan-feng
