On capturing the full scope of an evanescent vapor. With an audio recorder.
Over the last handful of years, I have developed a mild obsession with gathering sound and images from the places I frequent. I’m not altogether sure how it happened, but this urge has bloomed into a host of near-daily fieldwork habits, a stash of decent gear, a personal archive full of sound— and a full time faculty role.
Being the vibration of air and frequency that sound is, the moments that I capture would otherwise pass by me, through me, then away from me, extinguishing in distance and direction. But I capture them, though I know not what captured moments are good for. I don’t have clear purposes for the sound I keep, but when I listen to it, it takes the shape of a visual wave form on my computer screen through which I come to understand it.