Reading Response

1. Identify the article you have selected and why you chose it.
I chose "On A Clear Day I Can Hear Forever" by Gary Ferrington as the article to respond to. I chose it because the article had a great sense of first-person which I enjoy greatly. You really got a sense of a human being at the top off a tall building, overlooking all others and really listening to all the interesting sounds coming from below, and above. It struck me in a profound way as a sense of isolation versus connectedness with the world.

2. What are the main points of the essay?
I saw the essay as a basic story of this man relaying his experience in listening to a city that grew from a still, quiet morning to a noisy but interesting day. I think he accurately explored the joy he gets from learning the sounds of his city (even memorizing train routes and planes departures by sound). Even though he wrote of the many sounds he hears coming from traffic and humans, he seems to relish the quiet periods like the very early morning and the muffling of winter, where he proclaims "It is a time when I think I can hear forever."

3. How are the ideas or arguments in this article relevant to your own practice as a media artist?
What i really come away with from this essay is sense of community of sounds. The sounds that you can hear about you, from say your window, that if you pay attention or have the patience to listen to can create a tableau of a world of sounds. Sounds that can be irritating, peaceful, ambient, distant are all relevant and if we just listen they can give back to us an almost tangible feeling of community.