Save our sounds.

A universal truth; you never notice the things you take for granted until they are gone.

Consider the following sci-fi scenario. You put your iPod headphones on and go for a run. At the end of your run you take your ear buds out and all the natural sounds of the environment are gone.

I tried this. I put on a pair of noise canceling headphones and walked around downtown San Francisco for a few hours. I looked like a candidate for the short bus, but the experience made me realize how much I depend on the ambient sounds of daily life that I normally take for granted. The lack of an aural dimension was maddening. When I re-engaged my ears I was near the cable car turn-around at the end of Powell street. The clang of the cable car bell brought back a flood of memories from high school. I used to take the Powell street cable car to get up the hill every morning to get to school. This inspired an idea for an article about a girl named Wendy from my school who was my first girlfriend. In an instant I had a cascade of memories and a writing idea from the simple clang of the unique sounding cable car bell.

The ambient sound canceling exercise was inspired by the BBC’s Kate Arkless Gray. She’s just launched a project called Save Our Sounds which is collecting sounds from around the globe to create an aural snapshot of the world. You can see the Audio Map here. Speaking with Miss Arkless Gray in London I couldn’t help but to get caught up in her passionate enthusiasm for the project. She has quite brilliantly established a way to receive sound submissions from everywhere from every conceivable avenue, whether it be cassette tape via post or audio capture via AudioBoo on the iPhone. Most intriguing about the project is how it is drawing attention to sounds that have become extinct because of the evolution of humanity. I had no idea that there were libraries like the British Library Sound Archive dedicated to archiving the sounds of our history.

Since this experience I’ve become a bit of an expert of my aural surroundings. As I write this my upstairs neighbors are learning how to play the drums. I think the sound is unique. It sounds like orangoutang that found two drum sticks and a fifth of Jack Daniels. I even went as far as to record the sound on AudioBoo to send to Miss Arkless Gray. But then I came to my sound senses. Listen to the sound of one hand clapping.

I can’t encourage you enough to get involved in this project. It is singularly unique in its design and scope. Miss Arkless Gray is brilliant for drawing our attention to something that we wouldn’t probably notice unless it was gone.

UPDATE: A radio interview with Kate Arkless Gray via Andrew Stuart.