Drift Assessment

1. Describe two situations that aggravated, bothered, shocked or otherwise stressed you during Drift 1. (Please note that the situation CANNOT be technology-related.)
A: First was the weather, I went out on my first drift walk and like many others was not as happy with my recordings as I wanted to be. The next two times that I had set aside for my second drift attempt were both postponed due to poor weather. Another specific situation that aggravated me was missing good/rich sounds on my first walk. At one point I walked passed two squirrels that began to fight, but by the time that I got ready to record they were gone. I learned from this and from then on there always kept my minidisk recorder recording.

2. Describe, with details, two situations during Drift 1 in which you felt unusually peaceful, at ease, or contemplative.
A: Like I said above two of my drift attempts were postponed so I woke up early one morning and took off from my house at around 7am. It was an overall peaceful morning and made for a very serene feeling. With the absence of other people, few automobiles, and clear audibility of my surroundings it was what I was hoping to achieve on my sound walk. For one of the few times in my life I didn’t mind waking up early, it also made for a good start to a long day. The second time came from the sound of water running out onto a sidewalk between two houses, and unless you have been tortured with water, it is a very peaceful noise.

3. Describe three surprises or unexpected situations you encountered on your Drift and in the days that followed. The surprise could stem from your expectations that conflicted with "on the ground" realities, cultural or social issues of which you were previously unaware, feelings and reactions that you did not expect to have, appearances and soundings of things you did not expect, good or bad outcomes of "on the spot" decisions you had to make, or the discovery of "deeper" realities in the materials you brought home. (Again, skip anything technology-related!)
A: There were a lot of decisions that I had to make, and in usually short amount of time, during my drift walk. One of which was high and low sensitivity of the microphone, and a lot of times when I would switch to high sensitivity I would be getting a good full/rich sound and then some time louder would get picked up by the microphones. And most of the time when this happened the clip would be over distorted and lost. It was a learning process to know when to use the high sensitivity and it isn’t that this is a technological issue it was just that I had no way of knowing what or when sounds would happen during a recording. Another effect that I didn’t expect the drifts to have on me personally was a complete and unintentional focus on interesting sounds that I would have otherwise ignored. When I brought my raw recordings back and played them repeatedly I was surprised at how the sounds became more apparent and clearer the more I listened. I learned a lot about the places I went and look forward to doing another drift walk.

4. Describe your favorite experience, situation, place, or recollection from your Drift. Be specific about what happened, how you felt, how you reacted, and why you think this particular experience affected you so much.
A: I would have to say that my favorite place from my drift walks was the ally. I thought of all of the places that I recorded sounds the ally gave me so of the most interesting. Often full of nature, garages, garbage, cars, bikes, and sometime people allies give us a wide range of dynamic and surprising sounds. I spent a lot of time listening to the ally and it became a building block for my project.