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120 Panel 3Field recording techniqueI focused on different recording techniques to depictthe following three sound types; 1) atmosphericsound, 2) featured sound, 3) Mixture of atmosphericand featured sound.1. Atmospheric soundAtmospheric sound is the sound of a given location orspace. According to German philosopher GernotBoehmes, “the sound of atmosphere is the givenplacement of a particular location”. 2 The appropriatetechnique to capture atmospheric sound is to place themicrophones far from the sound source, according toBritish sound recordist, Chris Watson. 3 Depending onthe choice of microphone, capturing stereophonicsounds through the M/S (middle and side soundsusing a phasing reaction) and L/R (left and rightsound allocation) are the techniques normally used. Inorder to capture the rich and subtle sound movementof waves and wind over a wide range and to depict thison a multi-surround sound system, I focused on usingImage 4: Atmospheric sound: Sea wavesThe M/S recording technique. Stereophonic recordingthrough the M/S technique creates richer and widerperspectives and a fuller sound.2. Featured soundSound recordist Chris Watson has said “the featuredsound is to be focused on the particular soundsources”. 4 Examples of featured sound include thevoices of humans, animals and other creatures, ormoving items such as the sound of footsteps. Featuredsound is often captured via monophonic recording, sothat the sound remains isolated, and in order toprovide the flexibility to place the sound in variouslocations on a computer-based composition.My composition contained the featured sound of fishunderwater. A unique cracking noise consisting of fishin movement was captured with the use of anunderwater monophonic microphone.Image 5: Featured sound–hypobranchial muscular movement offish underwater.Obviously, this is not a sound that is normally heard indaily life, it is a sound that only exists in the invisiblesonic environment. In my composition, I mixed thissound with atmospheric sound in order to place it in aconcrete environment and to enhance the sound of theatmosphere.3. Mixture of atmospheric and featured soundCertain sounds are captured using a mixture ofatmospheric and featured sound techniques. It is oftendifficult to divide atmospheric and featured soundswhen recording in a particular environment. Mostenvironments contain featured sounds which accountfor a large part of the atmosphere.According to sound artist Francisco Lopez, “Thesound of the environment we hear has twocategorizations; one is the background sound and theother is foreground sound”. 5 This statement alsorelates to methods of field sound recording. In general,and in a cinematic context, atmospheric sound isrecognized as background sound and featured sound isa part of foreground sound. 6 In real environments, wehear these two sonic environments as one singularexperience. However, there are always sounds that wedo not hear “in reality”. Hearing sounds is a matter ofperception. For example, at a cocktail party, the earselects from a wide variety of sounds. And whenrecording bird sound, the results may differ dependingon the conditions of the recording.A number of singular sounds, and a variety oftechniques, were employed in “The Land of Isolation”in order to depict the rich complexity and depth of thestorm. In particular, it was necessary to control andadjust sound levels, directions, movements andqualities. The following aspects were controlled bycomputer- based software.1. PanningPanning means allocating selected sounds to speakers.The technique originated in the cinema, when theWalt Disney studio experimented with moving soundsbetween the left and right channels, even before theintroduction of stereophonic technology.The Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows