2022 World Cup has started. Numerous star players all around the world have been waiting for this moment and so are the rest of the audiences all around the world. Although a team or a player’s performance depends on their skills and experiences, support from the audience could play a big role in the game as well. The biggest reason for the world cup to become such a important event is purely because of the audience’s love and attention towards football. This project is an extension of my previous work, ‘Aesthetics of Silence’. Opposing this, I chose to focus on the ‘Aesthetics of Noise’. As a football player who plays matches with audiences, I wanted to explore the aesthetics of crowd support. However, instead of the game itself, I chose to step back further and focus on the contrast of audiences’ reactions and cheering. Through this project, I wanted to keep a record of the noises from the audiences. I chose to record during our match against Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Recording Method
I have used a 360-camera (Ricoh Theta S), and an ambisonic mic(Zoom H3) on a Ricoh Theta stand. I chose two places to record: one in between both team’s audiences, and one from a few meters behind the audience but still in the middle. The reason for this placement is to clearly tell the sound contrast. If a team scores, one side will cheer, while the other side will be silent. For a better view of the audiences’ reactions, I’ve recorded a few distances behind them. By using a 360 video, the audience of this project will have a better understanding of the atmosphere with more vivid and clear visual elements.

Editing Method
I used Theta S, which is the model with unstitched recordings. I had to stitch the file with the Ricoh Theta program, import it to Davinci Resolve, sync it with the ambisonic recordings, and render. In Davinci Resolve, I changed the channel to 4 channels by changing the mode in Clip Attribute. It had to be rendered in MOV file since MP4 cannot be rendered with ambisonic sounds. After rendering, I had to make it VR. So I used ‘Spatial Media Metadata Injector’ and uploaded it to youtube.

Analysis
Different sounds were recorded. Most of the sounds were shoutings of the players and from the bench. Players from both teams’ benches were shouting and directing the players to move, help out other players, and compliment their actions. Other sounds were supportive cheers, small talk, laughter and footsteps. There were times when audiences came over to ask about the equipment, but I had to trim it as it was a conversation that wouldn’t have happened in normal situations.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I found that the audiences were actually talking more than players on field. Comparing it with my previous project, I think ‘Aesthetics of Noise’ contains a different type of aesthetic in it. While previous project mainly consist of mostly ambient noises with small ASMR-like sounds, this project includes mainly shoutings and some applause that encourages the players to play harder