AAAAAA

It's 8 am and my roommate is getting ready for class. She has tuned into her everyday playlist. It's 8.30 am and I am walking to class with my earphones in, listening to a podcast. It's 1 pm now, and I'm watching an episode of a random trash TV show for lunch. It's 5 and I'm rotting in bed watching reels. It's 7 and I am still watching reels. It's 9 and I am watching a movie with my friends. It's 11 and I am completing my assignment while the Lofi background music girl plays in the background. It's 12 and I am scrolling on Pinterest. To add a cherry on top, it's 1 and I am back to watching reels. 

This video attempts to capture my tipping point of media saturation and consumption in everyday life in all rawness. What usually started out as a mode of entertainment became a necessity that made me a passive consumer of media. Passive because I consumed mindlessly. I argue that any form of intake, media in this case, must be thought about to create meaning out of it, even if it's a viral meme. This passivity, over time, made me dissociate from my surroundings. I stopped smiling at the lady at the mess counter and could only talk to my friends about a celebrity break-up story.

Through this journey of realisation, one particular element stood out to me - sounds. I was always listening to something to such an extent that I had forgotten what the breeze sounds like. I had stopped the art of noticing. This haunting feeling needed to stop, so I tried to stop consuming digital media actively. On my walk to class, I could now hear the car tyres zoom through the roads, the rustling of the leaves, the chatter of my peers, and my footsteps. 

It wasn't until then that I realised how much everyday mundane sounds matter. They act as a grounding tool that connects one to one's environment, people, and life. It allows individuals to place themselves and the sounds they produce in a larger, harmonious soundscape of their surroundings. 

This particular video experiments with the form of short videos by eliminating a musical aspect and portraying the real sounds of a real video made by a real person. It is compensated through its reflective tone, which hopefully provides viewers with just enough insight to comprehend my message while also leaving room to build on these ideas and identify this issue in their own lives.