In the Womb by Claire Smessaert

Overall, I was surprised by the outcome of my “In the Womb” project. When first presented with the premise of the assignment, I immediately focused on the first sounds that any of us ever hear. From there I decided that recreating the sounds that can be heard from within the womb would be my goal. While I feel that I succeeded in this, I was nonetheless pleased to hear the class’ positive responses regarding my work. It was great to hear that the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and that each listener could take whatever meaning they wanted from the experience. Early on, I had the idea of somehow confining the listener, to imitate being in a womb. After taking the shelves out of a metal file cabinet, it occurred to me that confining the listener would contradict the sensation in a way. Shoving someone into a metal, dark cabinet doesn’t exactly recreate the comfort of a womb, I imagine. Anyways, I soon dropped that idea and opted to have the listener comfortably seated, blindfolded, and surrounded by the sounds via headphones. Although I’m not positive if the blindfolding added another element to my project, I feel that it was important in order to get the listener to focus exclusively on what they were hearing, not seeing. Since I wanted my project to be realistic, I researched a bit online as to what sounds could actually be heard from the womb. Most of these consisted of vibrations, mother’s heartbeat, muffled voices and other unrecognizable sounds, all of which I incorporated into my project. The purpose of including the sound that an ultrasound machine typically emits is simply to reinforce the concept. All in all, I feel that I did everything I set out to regarding my sound project.