Class Assignment 2: Hearing Time (soundmapping)

This sound map, built on Google My Maps with descriptions on each sound and links to recordings on SoundCloud, has a theme on "telling time without visual cues". Our ancestors told time with the Sun. We now tell time with clocks and mostly smartphones. As much as we can see the time, can we “hear the time” if we are mindful enough?

The answer, as indicated in the creation of the map, is yes.

The map is divided into 3 layers based on how we can estimate the time by hearing daily sounds as they occur around us. I chose the HK Island area as it is the most representative of the sounds occurring around me.

The Bells layer including school and church bells comes first as it was the most obvious way of hearing time in my mind. Bells and chimes are made, not only to explicitly tell time, but to also tell of the appropriate activities that occur after the chimes. I chose to record near Ho Tung Secondary school. Although it was not my mother school, it was easy to tell time with the Westminister Chimes at the nearby Church during my music lessons there. A lesson bell signifies the start of the lesson, the bell at Chinese Rhenish Church signifies the start of Sunday Service, as much as they tell the time of day. Also noteworthy was that the Westminister Chimes were most famous for being used in the HK Legislative Council, but its origins and uses from St. Mary’s Church in Cambridge and the transmission to here in HK are much less noticeable for locals. In recording the chimes, I was also recording the lesser-known traditions of the church.

The second Commuting layer brings listeners through a typical day of commuting to work or to campus. I chose to record the footsteps of the morning peak hours and late night at Lei Tung MTR Station because such recordings would be representative of my typical day as I live nearby. The lack of ventilation machine hums in the long straight walkway towards exit A allows footsteps and talking to be distinguished from the background, as opposed to recording in underground stations like Admiralty where ventilation is stronger. Marked differences in walking speed, prevalence and proportion of footsteps and walking sounds, as well as walking patterns were noticeable at different times of the day. More details are described in the map.

In addition to commuting to and from work, the layer also includes contrasting sounds at HKU campus during the 10-minute break between classes, and during normal class time. The crowdedness and amount of people travelling from class to class used to be the norm for older HKUers, but it has become something special, something to be treasured over the 3 years of the pandemic. The pandemic has challenged our conceptions of “normal” in all aspects of life, even changing the soundscape. Most of us do not realize how closely the soundscape is tied with human activities. The campus was not really “quiet” during class time – there were noisy traffic and distant constructions going on, as well as furnishing work inside the Composite building recorded towards the end.

Last comes the Nature layer. Urban people are less likely to notice nature sounds, but unlike humans, the biological clocks of animals are insanely accurate, telling the time of the day or the season of the year if we are attentive enough. I chose to record at Ap Lei Chau Wind Tower Park. Living next to it, I grew up commuting and starting and ending days to different animal calls that tells me the time of day. Autumn was starting when the recordings were made, making it too late for summer morning cicadas that I used to wake up to. However, I used to come home from school to birdsong, as families of birds return to their nests before dark. Hearing louder birdsong later into the evening would remind me how long the day had been, and how I could finally take a break. I also used to run to crickets chirping as it turned dark in summer and in fall. As the chirping becomes louder and clearer, I knew it would be time to go home for dinner. Health would be easier if we could also restore our accurate, natural circadian rhythm. But modern life has its limitations.

The recordings were made using my iPhone 6s plus with a BOYA BY-MM1 microphone. As I struggled to wake up in the morning despite having morning classes, the morning peak hours were difficult to catch. I was often not commuting home during the evening peak hours, making the footsteps recording hard as other MTR stations had loud ventilation. Much planning was needed for a thematic soundscape like this, yet it was very enjoyable and interesting to explore the sounds I hear on a daily basis.