Shoebox Shots from Berlin is all about everyday sounds from aChristmas vacation spent in Berlin.I’d already been recording stuff here and there with a digital handheldrecorder, but I figured I’d just use the material for a library of samples. Andmaybe I’d make a CD and put it on when I needed some escapism. But for apodcast? Stringing together a bunch of sounds seemed boorish; narrating, obnoxious.Then I got my metaphor. While hanging out at my wife’s grandmother’s place overcake and coffee, out came a shoebox filled with piles of old snapshots. That’s it, I thought, why not do the same thing with audio? Andhere we are.

 Editingthrough the several hours of stuff I got, I was thinking of one thing: don’tover-think it. If those snapshots floating around in grandma’s shoebox couldspeak for themselves, why not these sound? Of course we’re conditioned toexpect the exact opposite from sounds. They’re usually presented asone-dimensional units: all figure and no ground. But pictures aren’t like that. Even if it’s something really important,like a shot from your grandparents’ wedding reception, there’s still a treebehind them and maybe a kid running around in the distance, there’s a tablecloth on the table and a cloud in the sky. And we get it, we know how to makesense of the image, what’s important, what’s not, even though it’s all of it anillusion. But who ever learns to listen to recordings and the sounds aroundthem like this? We almost always rely on some kind of image to tell us how tomake sense of the soundscape. Oddly, neither the photograph nor the phonographare illusions to us, somehow. We will oureyes to override our brains in the case of the photograph; our ears are just veryeasily duped.

 WhileI’m at it, I want to draw your attention to the machine. In editing thismaterial, I’ve not hidden the artifacts of the machine I used to record thisstuff. You always see the camera,whether you realize it or not—there’s depth of field and lens aberrations—andyou always see the borders of the photos and the lack or over-saturation of color.And everything is way too small, totally out of scale and two-dimensional, toboot. So, on these recordings you hear my fingers on the recorder, the wind inthe microphones, and the compressor pumping from time to time. Sounds will betoo loud and sounds will be too soft, the slight fades are completelymanufactured, the MP3 will strip out much of the original richness and stuff junk in the holes. I could go on. But these“extra” sounds are just as much a part of the experience of listening to arecording as the camera that’s made any picture you’ve ever seen. Not toforget, however, that it’s all an illusion. 

So,now my box of shots from my most beloved of all cities, Berlin. 

LOCATIONS

• 3:33 Playground at Helmholtzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg
• 3:48 Exiting café on the corner of Danziger Strasse, Prenzlauer Berg, headed towards the Eberswalder Strasse train station
• 4:35 Christmas market (2005)- this was recorded with a camera. Used it because I could, also because there is a marked difference in the audio and I wanted listeners to notice.
• 4:49 Alexa (new mall at Alexanderplatz)
• 5:12 Parisier Platz / Brandenburg Gate
• 5:46 Christmas Market, Potsdamer Platz- the laughs are from people on a giant slide
• 6:04 Churchbells from the window of our apartment in Friedrichshain
• 6:25 Party at the (now demolished) Palast der Republic- last one ever (2005, also recorded with a camera)
• 6:42 Bunker tour, Wuensdorf
• 7:05 U2, entered at Alexanderplatz, headed north (Pankow)
• 8:21 New Year’s Eve fireworks from the window of our apartment in Friedrichshain, 9pm before things really got going
• 8:58 In the tunnel headed towards the trains at Potsdamer Platz
• 9:29 Entering our apartment building in Friedrichshain, elevator
• 9:50 Exiting train station (ascending stairs)…
• 10:04 Bunker tour, Wuensdorf (ascending stairs)
• 10:25 In our Friedrichshain apartment with the typical sounds- Chicken Invaders, cheesy German Christmas songs, window open
• 10:40 S-Bahn (direction Zeuthen), this conversation cracked me up
• 11:11 Danziger Strasse / Lychener Strasse in Prenzlauer Berg
• 11:45 Café in Prenzlauer Berg
• 12:17 New Years Eve/Day midnight- from the apartment. Unbelievably loud. Fireworks lighting up the sky
• 13:08 Same playground as first sample in Prenzlauer Berg (this little girl talking was very, very cute)