Toy aisle soundtrack: An audio experiment
I want to start off by saying that this experiment wasn’t really a success. However, in its failure it taught me something important.
For this experiment, I went “hunting” for toy cars at two local Walmarts. I wanted to capture the sounds of the toy aisle at two different times of day: one early in the morning, and one at night. I imagined that the store might sound different between these two times, depending on weather adults or toys were checking out the toy aisle. But I was wrong. I picked my best two recordings, and they still sound essentially the same. The experience of the toy aisle was almost identical, and not that notable.
So, I’m inclined to conclude that the experience of “hunting” in toy stores often isn’t very meaningful. I’ve looked around on Instagram for examples, and hunting seems to be solitary, often frustrating, and sometimes at odd hours. So, the experience of actually finding a really good or rare piece in the store is important, but what’s more significant to the collector is having that experience confirmed and reconfirmed by the online community. The actual “finding” might have been enough before Instagram, but now it seems that the most significant and most lasting part of the experience is sharing one’s find with the online community.
So, please listen to the audio experiment below using headphones. In the left ear, you’ll hear the Walmart toy aisle at 10 AM. In the right ear, you’ll hear it at 10 PM. They’ll sound pretty much the same. There’s not much going on in either audio track, but that was still an important concept for me to realize for my research.
