In all honesty, it is hard to draw a connection between the chapter I chose from Soonish and notions about oral history from the story corps. The chapter I chose to read was chapter two and it was talking about the ways in which space exploration (more specifically rockets) could be made more affordable if scientists explored a couple of other methods like reusing old rockets (Weinersmith, 2017, pg. 13). On the surface, there’s nothing that relates this reading to the information that talks about oral histories and how things are recorded. Maybe, in a non-connected way, these readings are connected in the way in which space technology was created and how the information scientists recorded helps future generations on how they navigate making space technology more affordable. Or even just discussing it with other scientists.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous class on Tuesday, I would like to opt out of creating an oral history project for a sound-scape project. It’s not that an oral history project is uninteresting; I’ve completed similar projects and relatively know how to create a similar project. It’s that the alternative project sounds very interesting in how someone could create a

space with sounds alone and transport the listener to that space.

Currently, I am a double major and I am finishing my first degree next semester. I’ve been trying to think of ways I could incorporate adding a sense of space into my final exhibition and this project would be a great way to explore a sound perspective for it. Primarily what I would like to do is record sounds regarding rain, wind, rustling leaves, or other similar sounds to try and represent a forest or the arboretum over at the University of Idaho.

This is a photo of a set of trees I took at the University of Idaho Arboretum for my BFA project. Created by: Jessica Harja, October 2018.

Weinersmith, Zach and Kelly. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies that’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. Penguin Press: New York, 2017.