In the garden (Traces - 04/2021)

Sound recording and Stop Motion Animation

When I went outside my house to get inspiration for this project I was struck by the beautiful sounds of the birds in my garden. They make in a way their own little place with their sounds. And I wanted to shape these feeling from being outside in a work.

Not knowing what it would be … I started with recording all the singing of different birds in my garden. I tried also to get the sounds from other birds that I can hear from my garden, but are in different trees in the neighborhood. I heard these recordings and decided together with the help of Andrea and Gabriel to make something out of these recordings with an audio editing program. That resulted in a one minute sound recording. 

For a long time I was thinking about trying the scanner for a Stop Motion Video. The meaning of the project was to use materials that you never used before. The only thing that I could find was a sewing kit with very thin thread. So I tried on the scanner if the threads would be visible, not really believing that it would work. I really liked the image that the thin threads under the scanner gave. And so did Andrea and Gabriel..

When I started finally with the images for the stop motion animation under the scanner.. I could only think of the beaks of the birds moving while they sing. So I tried to make beaks of the birds from the very thin threads. Nothing more, nothing less. When you hear the birds singing it is always difficult to find the specific bird that is singing. Usually you don’t see the bird. They are hidden in trees or bushes. You don’t know what kind of bird it is. And that suits very well to the sound recording that I made. I made about 6 fictive bird sounds with combining different tones.

I called the whole project «In the garden».

When I see the beaks on the stop motion and hear the sounds… I can imagine all the grasses, flowers, bushes and trees around. Can You too?