One of the loudest places in our homes is kitchen, but most likely we do not pay attention to the cacophony of sounds created there; focusing instead on the preparation of the meal, perhaps having a side-conversation, and often playing music over these ambient sounds.

On Thursday 23 April, during one regular lunch making process, I made an effort to pay attention to the sounds of my kitchen. While doing so, I also audio recorded my lunch- making process, starting from the moment I have entered the kitchen and stopping once the meal was done and the dishes washed (duration 25 min 41 sec). Even though, on this particular occasion, I have paid significant attention to the kitchen sounds, it was only once I listened back to the recording that I perceived all that sounded. Perhaps because while cooking, I was still distracted by other senses; my attention to sound dissipated by focus given to the ingredients that needed to be put in the right order. It was only while listening back to the recording, via my headphones, that I was able to block all the distractions and notice the details. I have then perceived the following sounds:

• Opening and closing of the fridge § Fridge draw pulled out and back in § Running water

• My own footsteps

• My breathing

• Peeling a potato

• Placing wooden chopping board on top of the working surface

• Chopping vegetables (variety of sound intensity, loudness, and speed)

• Opening and closing of the cupboards

• Sound of pots banging against each other and against the kitchen surfaces § Placing pots on the stove

• Lighting the stove

• Throwing food items onto the pan

• Opening a jar

• Frying sound

• Water boiling sound

• Spoon stirring sounds

• My housemates having short conversation in the background

• My housemate Nick practicing music in his room

• Rangehood (smoke extractor fan); introduced minute 13

• Pulling utensils out of the draw

• Paper packaging

• Sponge brushing against the frying pan

• Placing dishes on the metal dish dryer

• Switching the rangehood button off

All in all, my lunch makes a hell lot of sound, most of which I am commonly not aware of, apart from the sound of the rangehood which I only occasionally use and which is so loud that it draws out all other sounds (bad product sound design here!). Another sound that I also pay attention to during the meal-making process is the sound of the food frying under the lid of the pan. This sound provides information on how the cooking is progressing (so I don’t need to lift the lid up every few minutes) and I relay on it in the process. I can hear once the food is close to finished. But, apart from these couple of sounds, all other sounds simply fall into the background, received but unperceived. Because, kitchen is normally not an environment where we focus on sound. I wonder, however, what would happen if these same sounds were experienced in a different context? What meaning would we ascribe to them then? Writing about Doug Aitken’s sound installation Sonic Pavilion (2009), Seth Kim- Choen observed:

“Like every medium, sound derives its meaning from context, from intertextuality, [...]. It is the worldly, rather than the earthly, that presents the possibility of meaning.”1

So, what if these same sounds were made on the stage of a concert hall? Would we call them music? In an art gallery, we would label them sound art or sound installation. If placed in a movie they would be foley or ambient, diegetic sounds. But, while in the kitchen they remain merely sounds; occasionally noises if we unexpectedly drop something or introduce a sound making device such as rangehood. These sounds accompany us daily and therefore become imperceptible, silent. The kind of silence that Cage wants to draw our attention to, when he suggests that music is everywhere.

Listening back to the recording of my lunch-making, I noticed that all these sounds mix together in the orchestra of pots, cupboards, utensils, food packages, chopping boards, water running, vegetables frying, rangehood blowing, and so on. The kitchen, of course, did not make this composition by itself; it was my movement through it, the order in which I used the objects, thus creating a variety of collisions between materials, that produced this soundscape. My intention while cooking was not to make music, or even to produce sounds. However, the sounds were made and there was a certain (albeit unintentional) organisation to them.

On this particular day, my lunch-making composition was pretty much improvised, given that I was not using a particular recipe while cooking, although there was some planning in terms of the type of meal I have decided to make. What is more, in this particular meal-making composition there were no ‘intentional’ product sounds such as microwave ring or a clock timer. The fridge that I have is not of the latest design and has no synthetic sounds designed into it; neither does my rangehood sing a song while sucking in the smoke. It’s a plain old kitchen and I make meals in a plain old way – a ‘slow food’ preparation that results in a composition that is full of ‘consequential’ product sounds.