easy rider
in the 6 weeks that i've been in perth, i haven't done a lot of gadding about. i've actually used the time (and the lack of social life) to focus heavily on being here in the studios.
i've been trying to implement a day a week to get out of the city and check out a bit of the rest of state - to no avail. until today.
i hired a scooter for the weekend, which has been trés cool. damn those little things suit my style and i think i have to get one when i get back to melbs. i've not ridden one before, so had a few days of riding around perth to get used to it, then hit the highways today.
i made a few errors (like following google maps' directions to a highway bypass, which is basically a freeway. not good for scooters), but enjoyed the trip out to lake leschenaultia. it's about an hour on the scooter from perth and had a nice big pontoon to dive off, some scary signs about amoebic meningitis and a nice big long track to walk around.
i deviated from the path a little, following the mtb track and reminiscing about the days of loftus/royal national park bush-bashing (until i broke my arm at thredbo).
i did my first listening project out there, which is very different to listening to the city. i found it a bit hard. there is lots of space between sounds, but a lot of white noise, as the wind rushes through the trees. and i don't know what the different birds are, so writing high-pitched bird call and answer feels a bit, well inadequate.
but i found the walking and listening to only the sound of my own crunchy footsteps pretty easy. i've come back feeling a bit windblown, but refreshed. next week, i think i'll try and head further out.

2 comments:
You had me hooked with your statement about "i did my first listening project out there". I've googled your site and found these interesting links:
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com/2009/08/cone-of-silence-first-site.html
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com/2009/07/calling-all-listeners.html
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com/2009/08/not-listening-listening.html
And especially this one:
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com/2009/06/hey-its-time-whats-that-sound.html
But I still don't think I found your "first listening project".
hi there! apologies for lack of response - it just slipped past me.
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com/2009/06/hey-its-time-whats-that-sound.html is the first listening project - it was just a little start, that has gone on to be other things. i'm still working on my method and what it is that i need to listen to, so i haven't managed to package the projects into anything interesting online yet.
i started a blog for the ones i did in berlin: http://listeningtothecity.blogspot.com
and i think i'll have to spend some time in the near future framing them all in that blog, so that it makes sense.
but thank you for being interested - it did add a little spark to my day :)
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