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Sound-track-ing: An Exploration of Sound and Place in Art Education-- Data Analysis

Figure 1. The spectrogram shows 14 minutes’ worth of soundscapes of Saturday Art School on the dBV scale.
Figure 1. displays clapping events occurring (i.e. yellow vertical strokes are lined after one another.) right after each student’s talk about artworks. Clapping appears to be powerful for student motivation because of the silence between the claps. During these silent moments, students wait for their turns to clap. Clapping installs the meaning of communication support in class. Figure 1. supports this idea as it shows the sound of the claps outburst energy that was based on each student.
Students created a spontaneous choreography with the sound of clapping. The sounds were produced collectively by every single person in the classroom. The pattern of this spontaneous choreography started with talk, continued with rhythmical clapping, and finalized with a moment of silence. There was a balance between the three happenings. Students naturally created a musical sense because of the frequency of clapping they kept in the room. As they clapped, they were increasing the frequency of clapping.

Figure 2. shows the frequencies of student voices, clapping sounds and acoustics on a meter scale. The visual graph (spectrogram) is replicated from Figure 3. (i.e. visualization of oscillogram(waveform visualization) is explained later in the paper), displays different information about clapping. The black areas signify that there is no acoustic energy while the green areas indicate a higher level of amplitude (higher vibrations, higher energy). Spectrogram allows you to identify the characteristics and events of sounds individually.
In Figure 2. The lines are arranged vertically. The graph shows that sounds travel in the room, and the frequencies differ over time. The frequencies of student voices are not as energetic as the clapping happens. Each event happens after one another (e.g., step by step).
Figure 2. The spectrogram shows amplitude changes of frequency over 4th and 5th clapping, from sound records of Saturday Art School at Pennsylvania State University on a meter scale.

An immediate clapping event follows student voices except for the 5th one. There is a circle-like interruption right before the clapping line. This happens because the pre-service teacher gives quick feedback for the student’s artwork.
I notice the pre-service teacher’s voice clearly on the spectrogram. She finishes her sentence; then, students go back to the clapping routine.
Figure 3. is an oscillogramgraph, shows two channels— the left and right channels (left at the top and right on the bottom). The graph shows the pressure of sound over time.
Figure 3. Oscillogram shows amplitude changes in sound
In Figure 4., you will notice a heartbeat-like wave in red. The red sound wave is overlapped on the Oscillogram’s sound waves. This visualization shows the changes in sound pressure measured in decibels (dB) on a linear scale. The energy-segments in the below visualization once can see that the amplitude changes in energy over each clapping. The event happens because the students were engaged in the clapping activity and excited to cheer each other up by applause.
The energy of sounds and its’ level increasing up as the group gets closer to the end of the artwork talks. During the group conversations and talks, each student seemed excited and motivated.
Figure 4. Energy waves over the 5th Clapping event show changes in movement.