Mode of Attention

Walking the streets of Tucson near the university over the summer is like walking completely different streets than when school is in session. When school is in session there is more hustle and bustle, there are students speeding around in cars blasting music, college boys throwing footballs in the street, and an ever constant stream of people moving around creating a buzz around the area. Walking the streets near my house now that it is summer, things are calmer, more peaceful, the buzz is nearly gone.

What seems more evident to me now are the sounds of children playing. I didn’t even know that elementary aged children lived in my neighborhood until now. It is unusual to hear the laugher of children since I have been so used to hearing the rowdy horse play of adult boys. I hear the barking of dogs and the jingle of dog collars. Cars seem to pass less frequently with the slight whisssh that they seem to make as they go. Every once in a while, passes with the same base I am used to hearing during the school year. I can hear myself walking. My flip flops snap as I walk, and the ground makes crunching noises as I go.

I brought my dog with me on this walk. He stops every few feet, and I wonder what it is that he can smell. To me it smells hot. I find it hard to explain the smell of heat. It is almost as though the sidewalk and the asphalt are producing a smell that rise as they get hotter. It also smells like dirt. It hasn’t rained in a while, and as I walk the dust gets stirred up and fills my nostrils. Then my dog pees, and the heat makes the smell of dog urine reach my nostrils sooner. There are garbage cans along the way. Some smell like stale beer, others of rotting food. The heat seems to speed up the process of rotting, and it makes the smells stronger and more putrid.

The weather has not yet reached 100 degrees, to my knowledge. It feels hotter though. I think this is probably because this area has so much concrete and asphalt. My flip flops heat up as I walk. There is a gritty feeling under my feet as I walk due to the sand that gets in my shoes when the sidewalk disappears. There is a warm breeze that is almost unnoticeablebut it starts to pick up as I walk, and clouds start to roll in. It is a dry heat. My shoulders feel like they are burning and they probably are. I feel like I am sweating in my underarms, in the creases of my knees and arms, and most uncomfortable in my cleavage. I find this to be one of the more annoying things about being a girl. There is a tug at the leash in my hand as my dog tries to get closer to something that smells interesting to him. The leash feels hard and plastic, and I push the little button on the top that makes the leash stop releasing.

I always do this walk alone. Just me and my dog. It gives me time to think, and it gives my dog much needed exercise. I connect this walk with time to think. Time to be by myself. Living in a house with four other people and two other dogs, this is a usually needed escape. The sun starts to set as I get home, and it is another beautiful arizona sunset.

Mapping the Grocery Deit Fad Scene

I am what you might consider a yoyo dieter. I have bought into a lot of diet fads. I buy anti-oxidant, super fruit chews that say they help you lose weight because they rid your body of free radicals. I drink “Lean Shakes”, a protein based, meal replacement shake that is supposed to help you lose weight in a “healthy way.” And most recently, I joined Weight Watchers.

For this walk, I spent a few hours walking around the grocery store trying to map the Weight Watchers fad that seems to have taken over Frys and probably most other grocery stores. It seems to me that a least one third of the aisles could be deemed the scene of the Weight Watchers member.

In one of the frozen food aisles, a whole side has Weight Watchers friendly food. It hasn’t been put out by Weight Watchers, but the Lean Cuisines, Healthy Choice, Smart Balance, and other microwavable meals have a circle on them that contains their Weight Watchers point value. (For those who don’t know what a Weight Watchers point is here is a quick overview: each member gets a certain amount of points per day, usually somewhere between 20 and 30. Every food and drink has a point value assigned to it. These microwavable meals tend to be worth 5 or 6 points.)

In the soup aisle, at least half of the soups also have the same circle showing their point value. Progresso Light Soups seem to range from 0 to 2 points. The ones that are only broth and vegetables are 0. This is interesting to me because it seems to me that all food should be worth something. How can a food not have any food value? I also found that all the vegetable in the produce section are worth 0 points. They don’t have a circle point sticker on them, but my Weight Watchers point pamphlet tells me this.

In the dairy section, I found individual cream cheese packets and yogurt that have the Weight Watchers logo on them. In the drink aisle, I found Weight Watchers smoothies. In the bread aisle, I found Weight Watchers bread and muffins and cookies.

While mapping the grocery store, it seems like diet fads have over taken the aisles, but the fad that seems to be the most prevalent is Weight Watchers.

Infernal Noise

What I found most intriguing about the concept of infernal noise and art/music as a political statement was that the people who are performing the music and the people who are originally the onlookers often seem to become one in the same. At first, the performers are a separate entity, but when the onlookers start to dance to the music that is being preformed, they too became part of the spectacle. I thought that it was interesting that onlookers can become part of something larger without knowing it and without having practiced as the performers had for weeks.

Another thing that interested me about this idea was the power that music has to move people. It has an effect that inspires people in a way that speeches and rallies cannot. Depending on the music, people are moved in a different way. This was shown when the musicians that were at the WTO protest ended up playing a tribal warrior song, This act in some way triggered the police to tear gas them. It was interesting that there was probably a connection between the music that was being played and the reaction that the police had. Other music that was played provoked onlookers to start dancing, thus making the onlookers part of the spectacle.

The idea of performance just being something that is conducted in the sphere of a theater was pushed aside with these acts. I thought it was interesting that people could conduct an act of political protest without saying a word about the actual thing that they are protesting. I didn’t previously know that groups like the Infernal Noise Brigade existed. Music is something that can get past barriers that often keep people from understanding the same message. Often, a message can be lost due to language or cultural barriers, but when the message is being transmitted through music, many of those barriers disappear. People were able to know that at the WTO protest the music was a form of showing their opposition, even though no one said anything about being opposed to what was happening.

I thought that the idea of a political art movement was very interesting, especially when it was compared to actual political movements like Marxism. Performing music being compared to a political movement had never crossed my mind before. I was surprised that such a thing could cause such an impact.

Cacooned

Living in Tucson in the summer, it is nearly impossible to jog during the day. The heat keeps me from jogging until later in the evening, usually 9 or 10 at night. I have no misconceptions about this being safe. For some reason, however, I feel safer jogging at night when I have my ipod with me. I listen to fast paced music, and I run for about an hour. This is not becuase I run a far distance, but becuase I walk for a large part of my "run."

For this walking excercise, I made my excursion about twice as long. I traveled my usual path twice. For the fisrt half, I preformed my usual routine. I ran and walked and listened to fast paced, motivational music. For the most part, I felt safe. I know that not being able to hear my surrounding is actual less safe than not listening to music, but the cacoon of my music provides me with a sense of security (even if deep down I know it is a false sense of security.) I get lost in the music, it helps me find my thoughts, and before I know it I am home.

I then repeated this routine without my ipod. Much like the article I had read about the Personal Stereo, I found myself feeling much less secure in my surroundings. I also found that I was much less motivated to go as far as I had before. This may have also been a result of how much I had previously exerted myself, but I also found that I was more prone to look at the people that were around me and wonder what they were doing. I no longer felt like I was in my own world, but I felt like my surroundings were more foreign.

I thought it was very interesting that my ipod provided me with such a different feeling, but reflecting on it, I also realized that I do the same thing when I am walking on campus. When I have my ipod I feel more empowered. I feel like I am more in control of my environment. I think in a large part this is becuase I am in control of the music that I am choosing to listen to. I had never realized before that my ipod gave me such a cacoon until I participated in this excercise.

A Performance as Experimentation

For this walking excercise, I decided that I would elaborate something that generally happens in my everday life. I have a tendency to trip. I don't usually fall all the way over, but if I don't trip once a day it's a miracle. I saw an episode of a show that introduced the concept of "surprise trust falls." In high school, I participated in a Ropes Course, an event that tried to build team work among each grade of the High School through team building excercises. One of which was a "trust fall", when you turn your back to a crowd, cross your arms over your chest and fall backward in the belief that the people behind you will catch you. "Surprise trust falls" have basically the same premise other than the people behind you knowing that they are participating in the excercise.

I decided it would be interesting to do something similar. Nearly all the people who hang out with me know that I am a tripper, but I decided that I would come closer to falling than I usually would in hopes that I could be caught after performing my "surprise trust fall." To my extreme delight, I only fell all the way down once. Most of the people around me began to wonder if I was drunk, due to my extreme lack of balance and general poor walking capabilities. At first, they seemed to be caught off gaurd that I had actually fallen, but after the first time they seemed prepared to catch me.

I did this at home and around town for a few hours, and the only people who seemed to be concerned for my well being were strangers. I thought that it was very funny that my friends, roommates, and boyfriend all seemed to think that it was completely normal that I didn't seem to be able to walk more than more than 100 yards without falling over or almost falling over. It showed me that it seems nearly impossible to phase the people I spend most of my time with unless I do something completely outrageous.

Desire Lines

Desire lines are defined as: an informal path that pedestrians prefer to take to get from one location to another rather than using a sidewalk or another official route. The paths in the photos I included are trails that have been created due to constant though not designated usage. The trails have been created by people who wish to get to the top of a hill, Duey Hill, in order to look out over the small town of Spring Lake, MI. It is a way to pass the time, but I thought it was interesting that these desire lines support a desire to create entertainment for ones self, as well as serving as a path created to quench that desire.

I thought that it was interesting that there was not simply one path to get to the top. There were paths through areas that were dense with vegitation and trees, and then there were paths that were closer to the road (like the one pictured above). I also thought it was interesting that some of the paths were formed becuase there was no where else to walk. Some went straight through trees, but others seemed to be curvy for the simple purpose of wandering the area. In the photo pictured above, it seems as though the path is curvy not becuase of obsticels, but becuase of some other reason. Perhaps people were simple too wrapped up in the veiw to realize they weren't walking in a straight line.

It seems to me that sometimes desire lines are created out of a convenience that is not provided with sidewalks. Sometimes a sidewalk does not provide the fastest way to get somewhere. However, what I enjoyed more about my exploration of desire lines was the fact that they seem to also commonly represent a desire for freedom. A desire to explore. A desire to venture a way from the conformity that sidewalks provide and explore the unknown. A desire to walk in a line that is not straight. That is what I liked about desire lines, the fact that they don't seem to always have to serve as a means to an end, but can sometimes simply represent a desire to be freed from the conformity that life often presents us with.

I Walk in Your Name

For this walk, I went on a walk in the name of my boyfriend. In the name of getting to know eachother better. It was the first time I had been to his Hometown, and we walked together in the name of teaching me where he came from.

Over the course of this walk, we talked about what he did during his childhood. He showed me how to create a whistle out of the top of an acorn or a blade of grass. Being from Tucson, I had never really seen the top of an acorn, so not surprisingly, I also had never known one could make a whistle out of one.

We then walked a little further, and he picked a leaf off of a bush and told me to chew on it. At first, I was hesitant, but I was walking in the name of learning more about the man I love, so I chewed on it. It was called Sassafras. I thought it tasted like aromatherapy. I didn't really like it, but it was a flavor of his childhood.

We then walked for a while longer, and came across a group of children who had nets and were catching frogs. This is apparently something that most kids do in Michigan. I had never tried to catch a frog, but the kids let me try. We caught frogs with them for a little while. I was interested to find small groups of children along our walk all doing the same thing.

We talked about our childhoods. We talked about how the landscape had changed. We walked in the name of learning about one another. We walked in the name of our relationship.

Personal Stereo

I thought that the writing on the personal stereo was interesting because most of the writing was talking about walkmans. Since the day of the walkman, the personal stereo has changed and evolved quite a bit. They have changed in terms of size, shape, and capacity to hold music. They have gone from tape, to cd, to mp3. Somehow, in light of all the changes, the usage and the way people seem to escape into them seems to remain the same.

I thought that there were a variety of interesting points that emerged from this piece. I had already known that people often chose their music based on their mood, there are a diverse group of users, and personal stereos often help people “get going” in their day or with exercise, etc. What I found interesting was The idea that the music that someone is listening to can change their relationship to the environment around them. Once I read this, however, it made perfect sense. Music does have a large impact on how I feel, and I don’t see any reason why the music that I am listening to wouldn’t have the same effect on how I feel about where I am when I am listening to it. I also found that idea of a dysfunctional environment based on incorrect music to be interesting. This too makes sense. If the music I am listening to doesn’t match my mood or my surroundings, I do see that causing a confusion of feelings.

I have been known to listen to my music loud. I have also found myself listening to a song repeatedly until I become tired of it. I never took much more notice of this than the fact that I did it. I thought that it was very interesting when I read that one possible reason that people listen to music on repeat is so that they can remain static within the flow of time and place. I had never thought about it this way, but looking back on the days that I did this, I had remained stuck in my thought/mood until the music changed. I also thought I just liked loud music, but thinking about it in the sense that the volume drowns out other sounds that could be mood altering also makes a lot of sense. I was relieved to know that I am not the only person that had gotten lost in the music and arrived at a destination without quite remembering how they got there.

I thought that the idea that before the train was invented people never had a reason to stare at one another for longer than a few minutes much less hours was intriguing. I know that eye contact with strangers often makes people uncomfortable. I thought that it was interesting that it is easier for some people to make eye contact when listening to a personal stereo, because they are listening to someone else. The idea that listening to yet another stranger could make it easier to engage in what I see as a personal act easier was very interesting and a little unnerving to me.

Personal Spectacle

In the power points, the artists were trying to create a profound message. They were creating a public performance through spectacle in order to produce a meaningful message that caused contemplation. I don’t think that my “public performance” was profound or meaningful, but I think it caused contemplation. Contemplation more on my part than those around me probably.

In Tucson, there is a bar scene that at times, seems like it serves more of a function of being seen than it does enjoying yourself. What you wear matters, who sees you at a certain bar on a certain night matters, how many other people you know that are also there to be seen matters. For about the first year of my drinking career, I too go wrapped up in the seeing and being seen scene. That all ended after a few drunk driving accidents where friends of mine died, my perspective changed, and most of the people who have been being seen at the same bars as these people who are now dead seemed to take little notice of their absence.


To create my spectacle I did something that I doubt most would take little mind of. Most of these bars have a strict dress code. Not a dress code that is enforced by the bouncers or the owners of the bar, but one that was created and enforced by the people who are regularly in attendance. I doubt it needs to be said, but sweat pants is not among that approved items. So, for a few of the keys days to attend each bar and dress up in my finest garb, I attended in a pair of sweats, a tank top, and sandals.


I have been going to these bars for years, I have lived in Tucson nearly all my life, so it it hard for me to go to a bar and not see someone that I am acquainted with. What I found interesting about this personal spectacle is that it should not have been a spectacle at all. What I am wearing does not change who I am, I acted as I would had I been wearing the traditional dress and heels, but I was not treated the same. There were whispers, and I was less warmly accepted into the scene as I had been in weeks past. I doubt that any of these people went home and questioned themselves and the materialistic values that they have instilled in themselves and each other when it comes to the bar, but I found it interesting that when it came to things that mattered, i.e. the loss of a human life that had been present in theirs for the past two to three years there was little talk, but if someone is to make the meager fashion no-no of wearing un-approved clothes to the bar, mouths don’t stop moving.

Style Wars

In this video, the idea of the train tunnels under the city being explored as “tombs” was present. It was said that before, graffiti was something that was not done by many. The tunnels under the city have a lot of history to them. They have rooms that were once the first rooms of the train-line. Now, the art that is down there is also becoming a part of the city’s history. It will be part of the city forever, and the graffiti world is growing with the city. What was once the secret of graffiti writing, is now becoming something that a lot of people are doing. Graffiti writers go out into the train yards, and are a small person in the midst of the enormity of the trains. Once they smell the trains however, they become someone among the trains trying to produce something.

The hip-hop culture “bombs” the city by trying to spread their names from one side of the city to the other. They aren’t doing it for the acclaim of the general public but for the recognition they receive from their fellow writers. They are creating an immortality for themselves in their art. They do it for themselves, and in doing so, they are reclaiming a power for themselves and remapping the city with their art. The kids that are break dancing are creating a language of their own. A language that the people around them can understand, a language that allows them to use their creativity in a way that they want, and a language that allows them to do something that they view is productive when a large portion of people that surround them are smoking weed instead.

I was torn when I was asked if tagging was an attempt at ownership. As with most art, I think that different people have different reasons for wanting to produce it. For some people it seems to be away to attempt to claim ownership over the city. To show that this is their city, and like everyone else living their they should be allowed to express themselves. I even thought that the taggers had a good point when the train official spoke out against them saying what they were doing was wrong. They said that their art is constantly being washed off causing it to look bad, but if the officials were to allow them to paint a few cars and leave it, they would see that it is actually an art form. It seems as though others seem to be trying to prove something more than ownership. One man in the video seemed to be trying to prove that he was capable, trying to prove his worth, just because he didn’t have an arm didn’t mean that he was unable to produce an eye opening work.

At one point in the film, the man who was missing his arm was talking about how he lost his arm. He then said, “Yeah I vandalism, but I did something to make your eyes open up, right? So what are you talking about it for?” I think he made a good point. If he can create something that can be seen as beautiful or captivating to an audience why does it matter how he lost his arm, or that he is missing an arm at all. I also thought that it was interesting that he saw a group of TV people filming his art, and when he asked them if they would believe that he created it they said that he couldn’t because he only had one arm. I think that this shows that he was trying to do something more than just create a name for himself. It seems to me that he is trying to show the world, or at least the people that know who his is, that he can create astounding tags. His lack of an arm is of no matter.

I think the fact that the majority of the graffiti writers in this film saw their work as art was shown when they started talking about the man that called himself “Cap.” It was shown here that the idea of layout, color, and style are thought of by these artists. They create a style of their own, not always making straight letters, including arrows of their own (arrows going through the whole word, arrows stemming off a letter), creating camouflage and 3D letters. They see their pieces as art, and Cap had referred to one of the walls as a beautiful wall. What Cap did was try and destroy the beauty of the pieces that had been created because of the name that created them. In a place where most of the artists are focusing on quality, he was focused on quantity. He wasn’t focused on spending time on formatting or color, he was simply focused on destroying the art that people he didn’t like had created. I think that the fact that the majority of the taggers were focused on quality rather than quality (though most of them do create in a large quantity) shows that they are creating a form of art. It isn’t intended as a form of disobedience as much as a form of expression and creation.

When the art is created on a canvas and placed on a canvas, I think that it changes the general aesthetic of the artwork. When it is placed in a public forum, the artists spoke about how they weren’t creating their tags for city wide acclaim but for themselves and the taggers that knew their name. When the work is taken out of that sphere, and people start getting paid for what they create, I think that the lines of why it was being created get blurred. I think that this can often be said of a lot of art. If it was originally being created for nothing more than a personal reason, and then someone starts getting paid to create it, I think the drive to create and the art can often become changed.

Tag Art

The hardest part of this project was trying to come up with a "tag name." It seemed as though the people in the video were creating identities that they felt represented the way they wanted the outside world to see them. I'm not yet sure how I want the world to see me, but I created a name that represented my life/social scene today.

I chose "Green and Dumb" as the name I wanted to use. It seems as though my life is in transition. A transition that I have not previously experienced. My surroundings are changing. People are graduating and moving, getting engaged and moving, starting new phases of their lives, while I seem to be stuck in a very constant state of uncertainty about my own future. "Green and Dumb" is the name of a song by Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. It too seems to be a song about the uncertainty of life. It is also a song that I most closely associate with one of the people in my life who is moving on, someone who has also made a very profound impact on me learning how to find myself.

I chose to create my peice out of the pages of a book called "The Kite Runner." This book is one that helped me decide one of the only things in my life I know with certainty, I want to work in the Publishing Industry when I graduate. It was highly influential in my life. I also wrote the lyrics that one of my roommates wrote about me before he left across the words. They aren't profoundly deep or moving, but he wrote them about me. He too has had a deep impact on who I am, and I thought that it was only appropriate that his words be included. I feel like words are the best way to understand someone, and I thought that it was important that I included a lot of words in my peice.

To me, this peice represents the uncertainty that currently exists in my life and in my social circle, but also the path that can be found in uncertainty. It represents the impact that people can have on your life, and the way you can show their importance without saying much at all.

Rivers and TIdes

In the film “Rivers and Tides” Goldsworthy spoke of “obsessive forms.” From watching the footage, I understood these to be forms that are recurrent in nature. It seemed as though he related a lot of his artwork to the shape of the rivers that he was working near, at times it was a snake-like form and at others it was a tide pool form similar to that of the salmon hole. He then spoke of being uprooted and creating new roots. I interpreted this to mean that his travel caused him to be uprooted, and then he had to create new roots for himself by immediately throwing himself into his artwork without researching his new environment. It seemed as though this related to the bodies of water that he based a lot of his work off of. The tides are always changing, and because of this his art transforms as well.

When Goldsworthy begins to create a work on a rock with icicles, he begins to talk about potential and the excitement of discovery. I thought it was interesting because when the sun began to shine, it shone on both sides of the rock, unexpectedly illuminating the ice on both sides. Even though he was excited about the unknown potential of his piece that was then revealed to him, he also knew that the same thing that brought his work to life will also cause its death. The sun was going to eventually cause the ice, that was in the shape of a frozen river, flowing around the rock, into water. Another time this happened was when he was creating the tide pool-like structure near the salmon hole. The land provided the wood he was working with, and the salmon hole provided the inspiration, but later the salmon hole took the piece back. However, the salmon hole wasn’t destroying the work, it was taking it off onto another plane and turning it into another work.

When nature eventually takes his works back into itself, he doesn’t feel like it is destruction. It seemed to me that destruction is a word that seems to imply an intentional or malicious act. With the works that Goldsworthy is creating, they are only meant to last for as long as nature will allow. I thought a good example of this was when he created the egg like structure near the water. When the tide came in, he spoke of how he didn’t create it to be destroyed by the sea but to be a gift to the sea. He thought that he still had a connection to the piece and that the sea would make more of it that he could have. He thought that this was the same with life, sometimes there are upheavals and shock, but they shape a person as a body of work, shaping them in a way that they would not be able to do on their own. I think this was also shown when he was creating the work that came off of the tree almost like a curtain. He spoke of how there is a beauty in the balance of taking a work to the edge of collapse. Even though it eventually was pushed too far, I think this is also the same as in life because in order to know something’s true capacity for what it can hold it needs to be pushed to the edge.

When he was working on the beach, he spoke of how the beach has always been a great teacher about time. The tide causes restrictions on how long a work can be created. The beach also showed him a sense of uncertainty. The materials he was working with didn’t allow him to complete the work that he was creating because either the dampness of the sand or the weakness of the rocks kept causing it to fall. This didn’t seem to deter him, he instead spoke of how he liked working in situations where total certainty and structure was not available. He said he felt this way because total control can be the death of a work. The stones taught him that the real work was in understanding the stones. The stones grew in proportion to his understanding of them. Because of this, his failures gradually taught him about the importance of understanding the place and the materials that he was working with.

Goldsworthy created a lot of egg-like structures out of ice and stone. He spoke of how people often use stone structures as markers. When these works were placed in a museum, they still looked amazing because of the craftsmanship that I knew had to go into them. When I saw them in nature, they seemed more extraordinary. When I saw the tide and the plants overtaking the pieces, watched the elements cover up and then give them back, it seemed much more miraculous than the pieces did in the museum.

The sheep in the area the Goldsworthy lives have caused the land to become absent of trees. They have had a deep impact on the way that the land looks, but the people who live there have a perception of the sheep that is different than reality. This perception causes it to be hard to work with the sheep because they are perceived as simply being wooly animals, but in actuality they are very powerful animals. They have been the cause of political and social upheaval, people have been moved off the land in the past in order to allow the sheep to move on. It seemed to go back to the cliché that you cannot judge a book by its cover. The sheep seemed to be docile and unable to create change, but they have actually caused deep changes in that area.

It seemed like the absence of what was can be recorded in the landscape not only by what can be seen, but as Joe Sternfels pointed out, by what we can remember. Goldsworthy spoke of creating works surrounding holes. They show that life ebbs and flows, and it is wonderful to look into the darkness and see growth coming out of it. Looking at a landscape that no longer contains what it used to can show what may be to come.

Ephemeral Work

My intention with this peice was create something similar to the cirular peices that Goldsworthy created in "Rivers and Tides." His usually contained three colors and were all of one medium, though unlike mine, were created from natural materials found in nature.

This peice was created all from a variety of tabacco products that I found in my own backyard. Although these materials are not normally found in nature, I have found that they seem to be a staple of the makeup of our backyard. Rather than leaves and flowers, we seem to have an abundance of litter. I was amazed by the prevelance of cigarette packages I found in our environment, and I wanted to create a work with them. Living in an urban area, unlike the rural area that Goldworthy created his works, I found that I was much more likely to encounter man made substances rather than natural ones.

I too experienced the disheartening feeling that nature inflicts upon an artist while trying to create this peice outside. Much like the movie, everytime I got close to finishing my peice the wind would blow, and I would be forced to start once again.

This American Life

In the This American Life segment that I listened to, I really found myself drawn to the segment on sound. The man that was being interviewed spoke of the sounds that people do not usually pay attention to that are always present in their everyday life: the phone, the hum of the air conditioner, the sound of the telephone. What I found most interesting about this, however, was that he pointed out what musical note each object was in. He said that the sound of his office was in an augmented fourth. This sound was perceived by the Church to be a sound that was fearful. His microwave was making a noise in a C cord.

After listening to this interview, I sat outside with my roommate and we listened to noises that the city of Tucson makes. I found it amazing to sit and take in the sounds that people tend not to bother recognizing. The one the stuck out to me the most was the train. I have always found solace in the horn of the train, and somehow seeming to recognize this, my roommate informed me that the train was also in the C cord. While listening to the radio segment, it was said that this sound is one that symbolizes pleasure, friendship, and longing. I was amazed at how accurate this was. These are all feelings I associate with the train, and perhaps appropriately enough, I think these thing can also be related to the train.

I also found the segment related to touch to be an interesting one. The idea that someone could map out and become acquainted with a street by experiencing the variety of foods on it was fascinating to me. I also thought that when he said that the adventure he experienced in his own town soon became similar to the same thing he was looking for with a job in the Foreign Service. Pico Boulevard sounded like a foreign place to me. Each restaurant that he spoke of sounded as though it had its own culture and tradition. The foods and the people all seemed to have their own story to tell, and when each eating experience was described it was as though he was becoming reacquainted with a place he already thought he knew.

I was also amazed by the concept of maps in the segment on sight. When I used to think of maps, I thought of road maps. When the idea of being able to map anything was proposed, it showed a new side to me of looking at things. Mapping pumpkins on peoples porches, pools of light, and the amount of times people or places have been mentioned in the news were novel ideas to me. I found it really amazing that the pumpkins corresponded pretty directly to the places being mentioned in the news. I also thought that it was intriguing that no matter who lived in a house, some placed were mentioned more frequently than others. It was said that maps equal ways to describe the world. I really liked that they don’t simply have to be a way to show someone what the world looks like in terms of roads and lakes, but maps can also be a way to show the more personal and human nature of the world.