this sound blog was started in 2005 when i was studying in cal arts and living in California, US. at that time, i began to have keen interests in phonography.

as an international student, and someone foreign to the place, it’s almost an intrinsic urge for me to work on a sound blog project in form of diary to remap tourist spots, to re-interpret and re-explore (meaning of and senses of) spaces via soundscape.

the following statement was written in March 2005 when the project started in the very beginning. This sound blog is rebuilt in april 2008, and will be continued…

Sound-marking landmarks: remapping tourist spots (a sound blog project)
– This part of the project is in Los Angeles

Remapping space and the “I” as blogger and phonographer:

When one looks at a place, s/he is usually attracted by its visual outlook while one listens to a place, attention goes to the activities/ motions /movements (or their absence) there, from objects, natural power, animals or human, at that very spot, at that very moment…
This project is an auto-ethnography trying to deal with the notion of everyday-life practices as art in a form of sound/text blog published on web. It is my personal journey to these spaces. Yet, personal is the cultural, or personal text/experience can be read as a cultural text and part of the historical process. It is ethnographic, observational, not through the eyes, but the ears. It is an experiment to mix social science research methodology into creative art work, which is a sound art and writing project.

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i have never played that game as i am afraid.

…try to make it to a more crazy sonic experience…

a sound clip is placed in the beginning and connects to the same clip which is reversed and slowed down to 70%.

this is a mix with NO sound.

silence means a lot.

it is not john cage’s 4:33 , or the silence that trevor captured in his project — Recording Carceral Landscapes inside the californian prisons.

it is a personal shock when i walked in downtown LA.

when there is no sound, or no activities/movements, it serves as a valid ground to know more about that space/people/city. it may not be a full view, but this is how i experienced.

on 29th of march (yes the same day i was sick on train). i took off from the civil centre (redline metro and full metro rail map here). and walked along the temple street where all important government buildings, city hall, courts, records offices, hall of justice are located there. they are all historical buildings.

i intentionally went there around 4pm, where people would be off from work. i thought i could record people’s talking in the streets, about their works, their lives. i expected to record dialogues in the streets. i expected to see/hear lives in the streets. i expected to see people. i passed by the hall of justice and i watched 2 soldiers took down the american flag. it was 4pm.

i waited and looked around.

there are so few people walking in the streets. some people gathered in the bus station but just some.

i was shock.

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a psychological mix…

i almost passed out on a train… the event happened on 29th of march. but i did the mix on 4th of may, nearly forgot the day for may 4th movement in a foreign country… working on a psychological mix on an intellectual day.

on 29th march, i took the train from union station back to newhall. right after i was on board, i started to have sudden extreme physical weakness, then panic attacks came. everything else followed. the feeling of uncontrollable weakness overwhelmed me. this was a very scary feeling, especially when i was alone and i knew home was far (i mean really far in hong kong…). i had many experiences of this kind but that day was really scary…

i kept the recording button on… the sound of inside the train accompanied me… the sound from the outside and, the sound of the inside…

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and the little toyko tower.

http://www.aahsun.com/phonography/soundblog/japamtheatre%20mp3.mp3

a game centre in the 2nd floor of little toyko plaza.

watching people playing games are always interesting… they are so concentrated, they don’t know others’ presences… it is self-contained, self-absorbed, or one way to train the ability to focus attention…

i guess i better play more games…

amazing sound.

get maps and directions.

japanese village plaza, at the centre of little toyko.

there are quite a lot of interesting shops and restaurants. i found a sabu sabu place finally…

there is one big fountain in the centre of the plaza. and i realized in different shops, there were small fountains for sale too. a very interested theme. will work on it in another entry.

for this sound clip, i walked around the plaza and stopped at the fountain… i particularly like the birds singing merges with sound of the fountain, a unique kind of water sound…

get map and directions.