Recording Memories…

As part of my installation piece, there will be a sound element .  I envisage this as being in the cupboard under the stairs.  I’m not quite sure how i will set up the sound yet but i thought the best place to start was by asking people about their memories.  

Last Thursday I went around the School of Art armed with a voice recorder and asked people if i could record their memories of staircases, the memories were really touching and i was really grateful to those who left them.

However, after i played them back they sounded too stiff, too rehearsed this was because i asked the person if they would read their memories once they had written them down for me. At first I thought that this was the way I wanted them to sound, like telling a story.  

Whilst listening to the memories I realised that I had switched off and afterwards thought that the best way of recording memories is to do it in a natural way just like having a chat because the part that is interesting about this is the person remembering the memory, the ums and ahhs, the laughter, if makes the person and their memory more real i guess.  This is part of the process though getting it wrong modifying and starting again, its all about trial and error.

I don’t know how to set up the sound recording yet, but I did think about having the sound coming out of a old fashioned phone but after considering it i think that it would be too much, making it more about the old fashioned phone rather than the sound.  I think i’ve finally discovered in 4 years of studying art that it’s so much more effective to keep things as simple as possible, less is more.  So, maybe i should just play it off a small speaker system, i’m not sure yet but the exciting part of the process is in experimentation. 😀