CLIENT: NEW MUSEUM

SERVICES: 

Question & Framing

The Museum asked: 

• How do urbanists, architects, and activists create habitats that anticipate drastic future change such as overcrowding and climate change
• What role do data and privacy play in the perpetuation of democracy in the twenty-first century?
• How can networks and processes be made more transparent, accessible, and empowering?
• How can they guarantee accountability?
• Can art be the connective membrane in this process?
• Is there a cartography to identify those who have wandered or been driven from the center?

Collaborating with Dave Rife of Arup’s Sound Lab, Kevin Siwoff of Google, Dave Liberti and Bettina Zerza of Zerza Architects, we specifically sound to understand how new ways of listening present an opportunity to reinterpret social soundscapes of cities and the politics of urban noise. 

Approach & Outcomes

The exhibit, Streetscape Symphony, was an interactive audio installation exploring New York City’s five boroughs that sought to explore the way that New Yorkers create, listen to, and interact with their acoustic environments.  With many sounds competing with one another, we can often drown out and neglect to realize their significance. Using soundscapes, sound design, and data sonification, the exhibit highlighted how design can improve transit oriented development and public transportation systems. 

The installation was exhibited at the Garis & Hahn Gallery throughout the festival, and was featured in VICE Magazine. 

As the synopsis stated on the gallery wall:

An urban soundscape is reflexive. It is shaped by its inhabitants and in turn has a profound effect on their daily lives. For residents, this interplay often goes unnoticed; the melodies of voice, footfall, and engine often fade into noises in the background. An aural interpretation of New York City’s untapped capital, Streetscape Symphony explores this dialogue between the city’s design and the people who inhabit it.

Using in-ear binaural recordings, the artists’ parallel journeys through the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island can be acoustically re-experienced. The distinct sounds of the boroughs are an expression of the politics, history, and interactions that make each borough what it is today.

Headphones, typically used to isolate the listener, serve here as immersive gateways into these diverse auditory environments. Loudspeaker playback throughout the gallery reacts to the presence of visitors through motion tracking software. By nearing a borough, its sounds expand and focus, engulfing the listener. As visitors traverse the symbolic thresholds between boroughs, a new ambience emerges, revealing the rich harmonies that exist when the shared potentials of New York’s boroughs are in tune.

Testimonials

“Ultimately, Streetscape Symphony aims to force us to stop looking, and start listening to the sounds around us—the sounds of each other.”

– VICE Magazine