A sound piece exploring the sounds of football and how these act as a representation of the spectacle of this particular sport
In this piece I have tried to breakdown the spectacle of football to a grass roots level. I have used only sound in this because I want the audience to question what they are listening to. The fact i decided not to include images in this piece as I did think of doing I feel adds to the piece as people question what they are listening to and this in itself becomes a spectacle. I find the idea of just sound being able to represent the spectacle an extreemly important part to this, the awareness that we are hearing a spectacle causes us to understand how powerful this spectacle has become and that through just sound’s we understand what is going on. The notion I am trying to portray is that even without visually seeing football being played our knowledge of what is going on is so great through sound alone that this idea of the spectacle is emphasised to a great degree. These sounds make people feel a part of what is going on even though they cant see anything, they feel the need to try and understand when really this doesnt and wont have any impact on them which portrays the power of spectacle. To a footballer this could be a really interesting piece as they will listen to the shouts and understand what is going on exactly as apposed to the untrained eye. Jonathan Cray quoted “I will argue, spectacular culture is not founded on the neccessity of making a subject see, but rather on strategies in which individuals are isolated, seperated, and inhabit time as disempowered” this very much comes back to football as it can be seen as a source, an incentive of bringing people together and out of themselves. I think this is effective in my piece as you listen deeply to every sound and very much come into part of this game you can hear.
After making this piece I have decided I am happy I left out the images as I feel this adds to the imagination of the audience and how they perceive what they are hearing. The piece is not to crowded and I love this because it does break down the spectacle of football in a great way, we can just focus on this part of the game and then think about this when next at a game, it is a piece I feel that really makes the audience think about all aspects of the game even though we are only looking at one tiny part of it.
I have thought of a way in which I could improve this piece this would be to have words that are said come up on stage but in a way that goes along with what we are hearing in the piece. A way this could be done is to have the louder words in bigger type and the background sound in smaller text, this would be done in order to show a clearer image of the sounds and how these will be heard on first term conditions as many of these shouts even the load ones go unnoticed by fans and players alike. Another reason for this would be in order to make it more visually interesting and pleasing to look at, this would make the audience who are not particularly interested in football more interested as there is something else going on. An outsider to the sport may be more interested to the typical view of football and how this may differ to listening to this piece, I didn’t want this to be about football, I wanted to portray the spectacle and the hold this has on people so if I can achieve this with an audience who don’t watch or play football I would feel I have achieved this and made a good representation of a sport that is know for thugs and troublemakers. This however is not due to the actual visual sport we see but the people who get dragged into the spectacle, this is another reason for breaking this down to just sound as not any one thing creates this emotion but everything together visual, sound and emotionally.
On a technical side I do feel I can improve on this and would want to take more care on my recording of sound but as I was in an open park with a lot of wind it sounds average however I know I could do better if I was to tackle this again and that would be something to improve on.
