Audio Description Transcript for "Slope : Intercept"

Sara Hendren

Fade in with wheel sounds on pavements. There are weighted wheels, grinding against the surfaces of concrete and brick, bicycle wheels and their light buzz of gears, the faint ring of a bicycle bell. Squeaking wheels, turning. Layers of larger and smaller wheels.

These sounds grow to a crescendo, mixed and calamitous, and then disappear.

First voice: “So the mass of this block is equal to M. And it’s sitting on this—you could view this as an inclined plane, or a ramp, or some type of wedge. And we want to think about what might happen to this block. We’ll start thinking about the types of forces that will keep it in place or might not keep it in place.” Under this voice are intermittent staccato revs of skateboard wheels, in a patterned rhythm.

Second voice: “Make sure your shoulders aren’t facing forward over the ramp but your shoulders are aligned, so they’re over each of your feet. As your arms are out, you’re gonna hold your front shoulder down the entire time you go down the ramp.” Wheel sounds come up and drown out his voice, the sounds of his descent.

Third voice: “So when you’re crossing, have a really good look at exactly what you’re gonna be wheeling over. So I just get on the back wheel and just—go down slowly.” Sounds of effort, human breathing, in managing the incline.

First voice: “This is parallel to the plane and this is perpendicular to the plane”—more breath sounds buried underneath—”And so we can use basic trigonometry to figure out the magnitudes of the perpendicular force due to gravity—and the parallel force due to gravity.”

Third voice: “We’re at a pretty steep descent, and I’ll show you how I get on the back wheel just to slow myself down and control my descent.”

Second voice: “So: Knees bent, arms out, head forward, and drop that front shoulder.” Again the voice is drowned out by wheels gripping pavement, descending.

Third voice: “Now the other side’s a bit trickier coming back up. Takes a bit of power and getting your body weight over the front of the chair.” The breath of effort, the breath of effort.

First voice: “It’s gonna be the magnitude of the total, of the total, of the total, of the total gravitational force, I guess you could say that.”

“We can all of a sudden start breaking down the forces into things that are useful to us.”

A fourth and final voice: “The vibrations and the textures and the surfaces of the city actually come up, up into your body. You actually feel the surface, the pavement, the texture of the city as you move around.” Wheels eclipse the sound of the voice, ascending, accelerating, growing louder, and then gone.