Location:

Case laundry room is in the Northeast corner of 1^st floor case dorm. It is the only laundry room in the dorm. The room has one door and one window facing Case courtyard. The room is rectangular, with four washers and four dryers lined up along the two longer sides. For this recording, the microphone rested approximately 7 inches above the 3^rd washer from the wall. The recording was made on a Sunday afternoon when only one dryer was operating. There is another person in the laundry room waiting for the drying to end during the recording.

Soundscape:

the most prominent sound in the soundscape is the noise of the dryer. Since there was only one operating dryer throughout the recording, the dryer’s noise is single layered. This background noise was interrupted by the sound of water (00:12), footsteps (00:40), and the opening and closing of the door (00:42). An interesting feature of the interrupting noises is that they are very informative: a listener can visualize the actions and movement of the actor in this scene by tracing through the noise. Even without knowing what the laundry room shapes like, an listener can deduct that a person walked across the room after washing something and left the room.

The noise of the dryer is the keynote as well as the archetype of the soundscape. It is very consistent throughout the recording and it informs the listeners that this place is unmistakably a laundry room. Sound signals in the soundscape are the interruptors mentioned above: sound of water (00:12), footsteps (00:40), and the noise of the door (00:42). They provide cues to the movement of the person. There is no community sound in this soundscape, but there would be one if the recording was made when the drying finished and signaled with a “beep”.