Process Piece - The Greengrocer Game

The Greengrocer Game

Artist's Statement

Our piece features the process of grocery shopping, following one shopper through the duration of the activity from start to finish. The piece opens with the sounds of a parking lot – vehicles moving, car doors opening and closing, and shopping carts moving noisily across the pavement. Then the narrative follows the shopper into the building by way of automatic doors, where the rabble of customers, overhead music and announcements, and moving buggies are heard. As the shopper moves about the store, the piece aurally depicts the various noises that accompany the process: the low hum of the freezer section, the opening and closing of glass doors, items hitting the bottom of the basket, the squeaking of the cart’s wheels, boxes and bags moving about, metal cans and glass bottles hitting together, footsteps, and the shopper whistling a tune. As the shopper places various items in the cart, an old-fashioned cash register bell that is iconic for money is heard, acting as a constant reminder of the shopper’s expenditure. Then the shopper completes the checkout process, and the listener hears scanners beeping, both distant and nearby, a conveyer belt running, a cash drawer opening and closing, change being deposited and withdrawn from a register, objects being placed in grocery bags and a clerk reporting a total. Then the piece ends as it began with the sounds of the parking lot and with a car starting and driving away.

The piece attempts to cover the entirety of the grocery shopping process within a short period, while still lingering on each leg of the process for long enough to stay true to the slow duration of grocery shopping procedure. Our piece is comparable to the short documentary A Christian Farmer Barbeque because they both condense a much longer process into a relatively short period, yet both pieces are faithful to the duration of the process by lingering on certain portions that are more drawn out. For instance, in A Christian Farmer Barbeque, the action depicts only the important parts of igniting the grill and starting the meat, and then it documents the waiting process with slow, drawn-out shots. Similarly, our piece abbreviates the browsing portion of the activity, but dwells on the check-out process at greater length.

The YouTube video Virtual Barber Shop Haircut is an audio segment that is conceptually similar to the process piece assignment. The piece explores the use of three-dimensional sound using the triangulation of two microphones, and through headphones it is designed to sound and feel like the listener is getting a haircut. Once the listener is given the context within which the sounds take place, the distinctive noises allow him or her to paint a vivid mental picture of the action. When we were recording audio for our piece, we were careful to select unique and distinctive sounds to keep the listener engaged and oriented and to create aural imagery with clarity.