[accessibleimage] crusade to save sounds of the past

Resending from the Art Beyond Sight list
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Lisa

Cleveland.com (Ohio)
Tuesday, March 08, 2005

A crusade to save sounds of the past

By Tom Feran, Plain Dealer Columnist

The distant past was black and white and silent -- or so it might seem, if 
we judge from the evidence of photographs, documents and artifacts.

Those things can tell us stories about the past, but they only hint at what 
life was like in color. Even the addition of color doesn't tell us what 
everyday life sounded like, in the unamplified days before traffic and cell 
phones, when steam engines ruled the rails and horses filled the streets.

Sound recordings date from the 1870s, but most early recordings were staged 
performances, as posed in their own way as the photographs that go with 
them.

"There isn't much environmental sound," said Ed Pershey, director of the 
Western Reserve Historical Society's History Museum. "People just didn't do 
that. So we don't know what, say, East Ninth and Euclid sounded like in 
1920. It was different. And there's a richness there that's another part of 
history."

Capturing those lost sounds is part of a growing effort at the historical 
society to make its collections come alive.

Visitors to the Greater Cleveland International Auto Show got to hear a 
sample from one collection, the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, at a "sound 
kiosk" near its vintage cars. From the sound of the road in 1903 to a 
narrative about Cleveland as the first motor city, the kiosk featured 
excerpts from "Sounds of the Western Reserve Historical Society," a new CD 
of 14 creative "soundscapes" and stories.

The CD was recorded and produced by Jeff Moyer, a local producer, writer, 
musician and educator who has an interesting history of his own. Blind since 
childhood, the 56-year-old Brush High School graduate is known to adults 
nationally as an activist for the disabled, for his teaching about 
accessibility and to kids as the "Troubador of Inclusion" for the CDs and 
educational programs he has developed.

The historical society hired him as an access consultant a couple of years 
ago to examine ways of adding sound to the museum on East Boulevard in 
Cleveland.

"Blind people have no way of perceiving what's there," Moyer said. "The 
first thing that struck me, as with most museums, is that the place is 
silent -- though you're dealing with machines that make sound. It struck me 
that recording the sound of the cars could have meaning."

Moyer's idea dovetailed with the goal of Crawford director Allan Unrein to 
get the entire collection running, one car at a time, at the museum's 
warehouse and preservation center in Macedonia.

"I wasn't sure what I'd do with the sounds," Moyer said, "but I had 
purchased digital stereo recording gear. I'd go out while they were getting 
the cars running, to hear them starting, idling and driving away. I'd record 
them from the inside, including the sound of the horn.

"I was fascinated by the sounds. The one line people always associate with 
blindness is your hearing gets better. It doesn't. What happens is, you have 
to rely on it more, and it can become more interesting because you don't 
have access to the visual piece."

He heard a one-cylinder car that sounds like a steam engine struggling to go 
up a hill. He heard a car with two pistons starting to sound like vehicles 
we're familiar with. He noted the distinctive growl of a 1909 Hupmobile, 
"because even people buying a Hup, a low-end car, wanted the sound of 
speed."

Fascinated, Moyer recorded more sounds at the museum and the society's Hale 
Farm & Village -- from a steam engine to turn-of-the-20th-century vaudeville 
instruments, and a 1926 player piano "playing the real music of the day, the 
way it would have been played then."

He did research, added narrative to some of the soundscapes and produced the 
CD that's getting attention beyond Cleveland and will probably lead to more.

"It does give a new dimension to the museum experience," Moyer said.

"Access is not just provisions for people who have a limitation. It's 
opening to everybody in a way that's expansive."

Much like a sidewalk curb cut, the benefit of which isn't limited to someone 
using a wheelchair, access can deliver unexpected dividends.

It is access to the past in this case, and a message worth hearing.

To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:

tferan@xxxxxxxxxx, 216-999-5433

http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/111027785447521.xml




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