Entrance

I chose to examine a Home Depot because I wanted a stark contrast to my previous project, which focused on natural sounds. I wanted an indoor space that had a lot of different artificial sounds, but one that was still large enough to feel worth mapping out. Even though I was expecting it, there were still times that I was overwhelmed by the sounds of the space during my recording session. There was truly never a quiet second from the moment I entered until the moment I left. The entrance itself was a pretty standard sliding door, though I wasn’t able to capture the sound of it closing. Every time it was about to close, another person would enter, essentially making the absence of a sound into evidence of how busy the place was at that hour.

Halloween Decorations

If there were an ideal time to record sounds at a Home Depot, it would be the start of the Halloween shopping season, because you have access to the decorations. Many of the decorations on display were either static pieces or only had light-up components, but some made sounds. These sounds were a bit softer than I was expecting; in my memory, Halloween decorations tend to scream at you, while these “spoke” at a reserved, conversational volume. I’m unsure if these were particularly quiet examples, or if the rest of the store just made them seem less loud. I was expecting some inflatables to capture the sounds of the air machine, but that may be more suited for winter decoration territory.

Checkout Counters

While there were a number of sounds to display in the space, beeping was the most present. The beeps serve as Schafer’s concept of a keynote; permeating throughout the space, becoming a grounding feature that you can always expect to hear. In my map, they are represented by small green dots, with a large cluster by the cash registers that slowly diminishes as you get farther away. Despite being quiet sounds, they could be heard much farther from their source than many of the other sounds in the store. What really made them stick out was the irregular frequency at which they happened. One minute there would be a constant attack of beeps, the next silence with an occasional interruption. On top of this, each register beeped at a slightly different tone, adding to the variability. The lack of any consistent pattern made walking anywhere near the registers highly disorienting.

Paint Mixer

I initially expected the paint mixer to have a lot of sounds to offer, but I wasn’t able to capture that in my time in the paint section. I did manage to get the paint technician sealing the lid of a paint can with some sort of heat gun, which was an interesting sound in its own right. This was a consistently busy area, but also an oddly quiet one. Most of the activity here revolved around customers looking at paint samples without much discussion.

Garden Center

The garden center felt like a breath of fresh air in terms of noise, even though it was still quite busy. As a large warehouse space, the main building is large and echoey. It amplifies every tiny sound, and, save for a few distinct soundmarks, makes areas blend together. In this environment, placing oneself in space based on sound is difficult and overwhelming. The garden center has none of these problems. There was still the same rumble of shopping carts and chatter between customers, but the beeping and humming that the rest of the store was drowning in was nowhere to be heard. Even the experience of listening to the radio was better. In the main building, the music was always audible and often quite loud, but never had any clarity. The garden center was the only area where the individual words in the songs could be made out. In a smaller space with fewer sounds present, everything sounds clearer and less cramped, while the larger space has an ironic claustrophobic quality to it.

Garden Center Entrance

The doors to the garden center were actually two sets of doors, one leading to an outdoor corridor and the next leading to the main building. I was able to get a much cleaner recording of the second one due to the lack of intrusion from the wind, so I used that recording in the map.

Lighting

The lighting area puzzled me at first. I was expecting little noise, except, perhaps, some fluorescent humming or other small sounds, but in one aisle I heard extremely loud buzzing. I searched for the kinds of lights that could possibly make such loud sounds, and while most of the lights were silent, the bug zappers were not. I was surprised that these items were shelved with the lights and not the nearby garden tools, and even more surprised that the handful of display bug zappers could be heard over the typical store noises and even the radio.

Kitchen

The kitchen area had its own interesting elements. There were some pockets of conversation throughout the store, but this seemed to be where much of the talking was occurring. Perhaps being the nearest to the restrooms and water fountains gave people reason to chat there. There was also an aggressive scraping sound in this aisle, of which I never found the source. I initially assumed it was someone sweeping the floors, but as the sound continued it got louder and more drawn out, and it started to sound more mechanical. This didn’t seem to register to anyone else in the area, so it must have been a regular occurrence.

Appliances

Bass sounds were largely unrepresented in the store, with one notable exception. Somewhere in between all the appliances, a deep, low rumble emanated outwards. The center point of this sound was the area with washers and dryers, so it could have been coming from a display model, though none seemed to be operating. The source could also have been from an internal system of the store, such as heating or cooling, though I can’t verify this either. Whatever the source, the sound could be heard, and to a small degree the vibrations felt, far from this source. It reached almost to the edge of the paint station before even starting to diminish.

When making this map, I was inspired by Michael Soundworth’s “Sonic Environment of Cities” maps. I was impressed by how his visual representations accurately reflected the timbre of the sounds they were meant to represent. I tried to emulate that in my map, and while some of my symbols more literally reflect the object that made the sound rather than the sound itself, there are many abstract symbols meant to evoke sonic qualities present in the map. The blue rings mapping to the rumbling is where I find I was the most successful in matching symbol to sound.

Lumber

There were many sounds typically found in the lumber aisles that were not present on my day of recording. No one made use of the saws or woodworking machines, and though there were many forklifts on this section of the floor, they all sat dormant and silent. In the aisles, I stumbled upon a customer who was pulling some 2x4s from the shelf and placing them onto a cart. One of the planks dropped onto the ground, and another got caught on the shelving, which required the customer to move the piece around to get it unstuck, making more sounds in the process.
I found this to be a natural and relatable moment, and I was amused that I was able to capture something like it in my recording. Amidst all the mechanical sounds in the space, I was still able to find organic sounds when I went listening for them.

This is a soundmap of HOME DEPOT

Hover over zones to hear what they sound like. Click on zones to read about them.