“Intimately Traversing a Space of Agony” by Riley Duns
The Rideau River that roaringly flows along the southwest end of Carleton University's campus is a space that holds great significance to my heart. After receiving the most heartbreaking FaceTime call in my life - learning someone very important in my life had tragically passed away - I walked down to the river seeking the comfort that sounds of water bring me.
I laid there for numerous hours that night, though, I paid no attention to any sounds other than the roar of the river to numb the pain and drown out my thoughts. In this piece, you will hear me return to this space a few years later, where I intimately explored several spaces along the river.
In what I have captured, I give particular focus to the different behaviours and levels of acoustic intensity of water, as well as what these sounds mean to me. I also captured a wide variety of detailed and puzzling sounds that came about as I extensively traversed the spaces that were more or less accessible along the river bank.
In addition to the sounds of this space is a dubbed narration where throughout my journey upstream, I explain the emotional ease and hardship of these sounds for me personally; though, more contextually, I emphasize how crucial it is for one to perceive a space sonically, as equally they would visually, to intimately connect with it.
