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Fountains in American Tobacco Campus and Biddle Music Building

 

The variety of fountains is astounding. Some are small, with only a few spouts of water coming up, while others, like the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas, command respect with their grandeur. All of the fountain recordings below come from around Durham, NC, and while not as magnificent as those in Las Vegas, still provide an interesting source of auditory experience. Many of these fountains reduce the unpleasant noise of the area, but also provide a tourism benefit due to the relaxing nature of the sounds of the water. The following recordings come from two locations: The American Tobacco Campus and Biddle Music Building. The fountains provide an interesting point of comparison, since the ATC fountains were outside, while the Biddle fountain was indoors. 

 

Fountain 1:
Time: 11:06
Date: 28 Mar 2015
Location: American Tobacco Campus
Fountain 2:
Time: 11:23
Date: 28 Mar 2015
Location: American Tobacco Campus

The first fountain we recorded took several tries before we correctly used the 4 channel input. This fountain is at the top the American tobacco campus near the parking garage. While very few cars were there at the time we were, this fountain probably helps to reduce noise from the parking garage.

 

 

 

 

 

Outside Water: The water in this recording is very uniform in sound, with a constant running sound. It sounds like a light rain shower.

 

 

 

 

Inside Water:  The water in the recording sounds lively, and like someone slurping  or lapping up the water. It is much quieter than the outside recording.

The second fountain we recorded was close to the first. It was not a waterfall fountain, but a fountain with many streams pouring up. Its use is probably similar to the first fountain. 

 

 

 

 

Outside Water: This fountain was close to the main ATC waterfall, so its hard to distinguish the fountain's noise from that of the waterfall. Like the other ATC fountain, the water sound is quite rhythmic. 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside Water: The inside water recording can be characterized by bubbling and a sound that almost sounds like a low murmur. The presence of the waterfall is much less apparent in the inside water recording. 

Biddle Fountain
Time: 15:10
Date: 9 Apr 2015
Location: Biddle Music Building

The fountain in Biddle is one of the smaller fountains of the ones I recorded. Its indoor location makes it unique of the recordings I've done, since all of the other recordings took place outside. 


 

 

 

Outside Water: Biddle's fountain was the only one on this page where distinct human influenced noise can be heard. Indistinguishable talking can be heard in the background. Also, the fountain sounds similar to some of the other insider water recordings on the page, but not the outside recordings on this page. 

 

 

 

 

Inside Water: The inside water recording is incredibly quiet, sounding like nothing more an a tiny trickle of water. Again, the small layer of water is enough to filter out the human voices, though.

 

Overall Thoughts:

 

What stood out to me about this specific set was the uniformity of the water sounds. Even in some humanmade structures in other settings such as the garden's koi pond or the mill stream, a sense of variety existed in the water noises, but in these they sound almost like they are on a looping track.

 

One of the original goals of my project was to take the “human” sounds out of the water sounds to expose the true nature of the aquatic soundscape. Spending hours editing, however, I found that removing even a little of the human noise also removed the water sounds. Occurring at similar frequencies, these water and human sounds both make up the soundscape of the area and removing one does not provide a clearer picture but an incomplete one. In fact, the underwater recordings provide a natural removal of sounds that software editing cannot match. In many ways, authors such as David Dunn point of this seemingly contradictory fact that human sounds are indeed a part of nature sounds. To Dunn, We are not some separate, higher being, but part of the worlds ecology, including the world’s soundscape ecology.

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