day #3!

From memory bank:
A day of hiking and soundscape!
Today was more of a hiking day, and the time when we were introduced to how soundscaping works. We hiked out to ... Bass trail and Laura introduced us to the art of... soundscape!
Each of us had a palm pilot to work on. Everyone had one partner, so only 5 PDAs were needed. Regardless of your visual impairment, everyone therefore still had to make handsigns up for the various sounds which you hear.
The PDA screen had buttons on it: Insect, bird, reptile, jet, helicopter, motorboat, water... both natural and non-natural sounds. The goal of soundscaping is to collect data about the land's sound levels and by doing this we help Laura create a report on how often non-natural sounds interfeer in the canyon. This is why sound pollution is also a form of pollution, and people should really think of it when they walk or drive around in natural areas...
Basically, if you hear an insect let's say, you signal your partner using the system you 2 created. Then, he/she taps it on the PDA. When the sound stops, you signal a stop sound and the signal you made for the sound. Then, your partner taps the button again which "turns off" the sound. On a graph, that records the duration. Me and Janelle were partners for soundscaping, and our insect signal happened to be dragging your fingers around your head in a circular fashion. To signal stop, you did a slashing motion around your throat and then repeated that sign.

This way, we had a wide array of signs. A jet was one finger up, the wind was moving your hand forward from the back of your head straight out in front of you... We tried to make signs which made sense, so that neither of us would be overwhelmed with memorizing.

We had snacks at Bass trail after our soundscape was finished.