Photo of Mia by @topgold
ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES of living away from the sound of industrialised activities is you can better hear the world of our grandparents. And that's one of the unexpected pleasures of watching young school children interpret rural Ireland.
Using low quality headphones while attached to sensitive microphones gives our two young children the opportunity to parse the landscape around the house. A Rode shotgun microphone picks up and records the sound of insects, gravel crunching underfoot and horses chomping on apples. That audio sounds more intense than in the real world because it's focused and amplified by the technology. But what's most interesting is watching how those vivid aural memories become part of stories read in books.
