If these examples were reversed and we listened to the cars as we walked along the pavement and the birds at a junction, our relationships to the environment would be changed and our attempts to listen would be frustrated. In Sieve, a huge amount of sonic data is thrown at the listener who is naturally asked to make sense of it. For example, one is asked compare interiors and exteriors by moving from a quiet living room to a town square. A morphology between the chimes of a small carriage clock and a church bell at 2'00 obscure the fact that this process is taking place. We are taken outside again at 11'48 from the flushing of a toilet to a coastal soundscape.
Some environments are real and some are unreal.
These unreal environments allow fleeting images to pass before the ear suggesting ideas of speed and movement, the most obvious example being at 6'05. There is a certain sense of dreamlike incoherence here due to the ethereal drone underpinning the gestures of motion.