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03/24/03
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the city of chicago has about 45 movable bridges, according to chicagoriver.org. many of these you can drive over in your car or walk over, some you can go over in the el, but as far as i know there is only one that has foot traffic, el traffic, and pedestrian traffic all at the same time. i took the opportunity of a beautiful day to go stand on the wells street bridge and record the sounds that the bridge makes. i walked to the center of the bridge, where the two halves of the bridge separate to let tall boats through, and i listened to traffic going over the grates of the bridge, hitting the interlocking metal things that hold the halves together, and exiting on the other side on the way to the loop. the first recording (listen 1) is the sound of cars going over the bridge. the second recording (listen 2) is the sound of the el going over the bridge above the cars as the usual chicago city noises like horns and sirens can be heard in the background.
the pictures are of the wells street bridge as the el passes above the cars. they were taken from the lasalle street bridge.
Posted by alicia at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)
03/19/03 20:52
then i came inside from the beautiful thunderstorm to listen to the talk of bombs over baghdad as i made myself some dinner. "it's coming up on 6 o'clock in the morning in baghdad, that's 6 o'clock thursday morning..."
Posted by alicia at 04:51 PM | Comments (1)
03/19/03 20:29
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now that spring has arrived we have many more thunderstorms to look forward to. last night i stood outside on my porch taking a few pictures, recording sounds, and listening to neighborhood kids riding their bikes up and down the street in the storm, the cars splashing through the puddles of water, and the barely audible thunder being drowned out by the traffic. the voices of the children as the ride past seem underwater. the pictures nicely complement the feeling that the sounds impart. though this audio file is a little on the large side, it is well worth the download.
Posted by alicia at 04:46 PM | Comments (1)
03/18/03 19:52
a poetry reading at the gallery cabaret. the poet, robin morrissey, is reading her own work, entitled "monolake" as a cash register bings and a smoke eater makes white noise in a failed attempt to suck up the cigarettes smoke or to drown out the poet.
Posted by alicia at 04:42 PM | Comments (1)
03/13/03 19:33
title="length = 1 minute + 44 seconds, size = 819 kb">listen
ben and mena trott of movable type recently visited northwestern university to talk about movable type, which by the way helps me bring you this audible website. this snippet of speech is the story of how movable type began.
i'm looking forward to the up and coming release of movable type pro.
Posted by alicia at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)
03/12/03 17:30
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i never realized that the grocery store is such a loud place. the beeps, coming from several different cash registers, are never synchronized and don't form a discernable pattern despite my hope that at some point they all come together in some satisfying orderly repetition. the beeping, along with the sound of cash registers opening and closing, the cash register attendant coughing occasionally to spread her germs all over the money in the register, people talking in the background, a man laughing at something one of the security guards said to him, carts being shuffled about, are enough to push any self respecting grocery store worker over the edge. add to that the horribly annoying musac and the constant loudspeaker announcements about specials and reminders about upcoming holidays and i'm surprised that the shoppers themselves don't go insane.
every time i go into the grocery store i enter some kind of trancelike state wandering the aisles staring at brightly colored labels, humming whatever musac is playing, putting random items in my cart, occasionally running into people who stand in the middle of the aisle while choosing their products, and thinking of all the possibilities that breakfast, lunch, and dinner hold for me. ok really, i usually try to get in and get out as fast as i possibly can without letting the grocery store zombie within me take over. when i become that zombie it means i probably should have eaten before i went to the store and i end up buying things like the can of artichoke hearts that has moved with me from apartment to apartment for the last few years that i know i will never actually eat.
Posted by alicia at 02:09 PM | Comments (1)
03/06/03 13:38
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hot doug's is truly the finest in encased meats. i rarely ever get anything off the regular menu because the daily special sausages are usually too good to pass up. this time i had the smokey cheddar sausage with cheese and cheese fries. i was tempted to get the rattlesnake sausage, but after tasting the cherry and apple sausage that my friend was eating, i've decided it has a much more interesting taste than the rattlesnake. i am hoping for the day when i can taste the duck and fois gras sausage, which never appears on the menu when i'm there. for those of you who are vegan, there is also a vegan option.
Posted by alicia at 02:59 PM | Comments (3)
03/04/03 10:00
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a random hammering noise, a person shuffling by, me sniffling a little due to the coldness of the day, a car driving past, and the blaring test emergency alarm that sounds the first tuesday of every month in chicago. it is almost amazing that as the siren comes to an end, things go on as usual.
Posted by alicia at 12:21 PM | Comments (10)
03/01/03
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title="length = 1 minute 1 second size = 480 kb">listen
while it sounds like a very annoying (or pleasing) song, depending on your taste, this clip is from a recent trip to guitar center. the volume of every piece of gear in that place is always up too high and the sounds clash so much that it makes my head feel like it is about to explode.
title="length = 5 seconds size = 42 kb">listen
just after the phone rings you can hear a guy saying something in the background. it kind of sounds like he might be saying, "i'm on a whole other world."
Posted by alicia at 01:21 PM
02/28/03 23:11
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a band making use of one of the studio rooms at wnur as the clinically inclined show was taking place next door.
Posted by alicia at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)
02/28/03
various
title="length = 1 minute 15 seconds size = 588 kb">listen 02/28/03 16:33
outside of ispat inland steel mill, the first place we stopped to record noise and take pictures, there is a machine of some sort connected to a small white building with white pipes extruding from the walls. the fairly loud hissing machine noise is a constant reminder that even though it is pretty desolate around this area, a lot is going on.
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02/28/03 16:35
while recording the sounds from the little white building, a train made its way down the tracks right next to me. this provided many good pictures for j3s and david. just as it began to pass, the people who were in the front engine car looked out and waved at us. i made the hand motion kids (pretending to pull an imaginary horn hanging from the ceiling) make at truckers to get them to honk their horns on long car trips, and sure enough the slightly amused train operator pulled the horn for me. i had a very long clip of the train passing, but due to an oversight on my part, the rest was erased. in the future i plan to head south of the city again or maybe out to the country to find a train and record it passing by.
listen 02/28/03 17:21
later, at a different factory, and while on a public road we were asked to not take any more pictures.
a lot of people in this area seem be into photography. how could you not be if you saw rusting factories, machinery, and decay on a daily basis. this isn't the first time i've gone to explore industrial areas, and it isn't the first time i've been bothered by security . usually the security guards are very nice, as was the case with this guy. technically speaking, i would like to point out that i was not taking any pictures, though i was driving the getaway car for my friends to snap as many pictures as possible before we were strongly encouraged to go elsewhere.
we continued to drive around and take more pictures, just of other places. a delapidated and unattended security booth led over a bridge to the long and very picturesque entrance of some steel refinery next to the lake where you could clearly see what strongly resembled the springfield tire fire.
if you have not checked out the pictures from the trip to indiana at j3s.net/photolog yet, i strongly encourage you to do so, here and here.
Posted by alicia at 12:51 PM | Comments (2)
02/28/03 15:15
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driving in my car on the way down to take some pictures of factories, listening to 52 girls (the best b-52 song ever) this random interference made its way into my car. i turned down the radio and the sound was still coming through the speaker of my driver side door. naturally, i recorded it. it went on for a much longer time, but due to technical difficulties while recording, i only got this small snippet. jes, dave, and i decided that the sound came from a large truck with possibly the worlds largest antenna on the back. look at a picture of the truck and antenna over at j3s.net/photolog.
Posted by alicia at 12:38 PM | Comments (2)
02/26/03 09:10
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this sound is from a gas pump at the augusta and damen gas station. the pump was making this noise without anyone even pumping gas. i love sounds that have a pattern. sometimes when i'm drifting off to sleep at night i can hear (or maybe imagine) little creaks around my house and the traffic outside forming some kind of rhythmic pattern together as i drift off to sleep.
Posted by alicia at 12:35 PM | Comments (1)