As you may know, I've taken several other treks around Water st and each trek has been amazing. There's been some good and bad and I think that I should probably explain what's happened to me in the last two treks.
First the bad things. When I did my first two blogs, I wanted to capture sound of Milwaukee and take pictures of shadows and text. I love taking pictures and I've always wondered what Milwaukee has sounded like. I honestly had thought that the technology would give me problems when it turned out to be just people.
On my first trek, I had headphones and microphones secured to my head and body. At first, people just saw me and then went on their merry little way. But then an hour later, I started getting people who started either A.) getting louder with their conversation or B.) Shut up completely. With the A group, I would be walking along the Buffalo and Water St. pier, when they would come up and start talking. And as they'd get closer to me, they'd start talking really loud about drinking or sex. Which then messed up my sound, because I didn't and still don't feel comfortable putting nature sounds mixed in with someone whose purposely acting inappropriate. With group B it was the total opposite, because I would be sitting down and the group would be talking quietly. I could hear little bits about how someone was sick, and as soon as they saw the microphones, NADA! They shut down and wouldn't say anything until I left. Or they'd point to their friends.
Now thinking of it, I can understand why they got a little leery. However, I wasn't taking photos of them, and pointing at me is not cool and not funny. It's odd. But not as odd as that man on my second trek.
On my second blog, I've posted pictures and movies of shadows/text. The thing is that while taking these photos, I had a man actually ask me about what I was doing. I was taking pictures of the Milwaukee Public Market sign, when this man stopped in his tracks and just looked at me. He then shouted at me from across the street, "HEY! YOU VISITING??"
Me: "No, I live here in Milwaukee." Now, I thought that I was speaking loud enough. Apparently, he hadn't heard me and actually waited for me to cross the street to ask me again if I was visiting. When I told him that I was just doing this for fun, he then said okay and then followed me into an alley that I had walked down. I don't know he would follow me and he was probably just trying to pick me up, but that was creepy. I felt trapped, I started lying to him about how I had only so much time before I had to catch my bus. I just felt really disturbed by him and he finally got the message once I finally found a group of people.