Script:

Storyboard:

Use Experience:

Technical Diagram:

Foley Square looks like an island – situated amid a see of tightly packed cars and serious buildings.

Foley Square was an island – situated in an unlikely urban pond.

Foley Square is an island of water – situated in an unlikely urban landscape?

Foley Square was a slum home to brutal gangs

Foley Square was the site of the Brideshead prison, and has been the site of carriages and miscarriages of justice.

Foley Square was the site of a graveyard holding the remains of 10,000 people.

“This bronze medallion is one of five that commemorate various epochs in the life of Foley Square and its environs. This particular relief sculpture acknowledges the presence underfoot of the so-called Negro Burial Ground, in which the remains of as many as 10,000 men, women, and children were interred between 1712 and 1794. Its central image consists of a skeleton and broken shackles.”  (New York Parks Department NYC Parks Department Website)

Proposals:

I propose a project designed for two senses that caters to audiences of differing levels of involvement.

The first part of the proposal is an installation or sculptural element that anyone passing through, or spending time in the park would interact with. It should evoke a peaceful anxiety. A feeling of momentarily intersecting with coexisting but, for the most part, invisible worlds. It should be an interesting object that a passerby would notice and possibly be intrigued by.

The second piece of the proposal requires a more intentional participation. Signs near the installations would direct interested viewers to a url, or smart phone app that would allow them to explore the sonic landscape of these overlapping invisible worlds.

The installation could be:

Subterranean projections situated in large holes covered by opaque projection medium (thick, frosted plexiglass?)

Perhaps the projection is water – a window to the pond that was there.

Perhaps the projection is a skeleton, or human figure (signs of living still?), enveloped by roots.

Perhaps the projection is cobblestone, human and animal paths pass through it.

The installation could be:

Similar opaque projection materials oriented vertically. With the right orientation to the screen, the passerby sees the architecture and landscape that existed in that spot match up with the architecture today. My feeling is this would be more immediately legible as a window to another time -  not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

The sonic environment could be mapped to a larger area of lower manhattan. Using frequent gps calls, in conjunction with data from the accelerometer and compass built in to the smart phone, a fairly exact real time orientation and trajectory through space could be determined (this will be difficult). The sonic landscape would be designed to evoke the feeling of being in different places, and of traveling through time. It would be more evocative, and interpretive than representative, as archival recordings of this place and these moments in time would be impossible to come by. I’m interested in creating a mood that is wistful and otherworldly, and to as great an extent as possible, dictates how audience members think about and perceive their surroundings.

This idea is related to the project I presented at the spring show, that I’m now calling Paths. (video on vimeo) also in the post below this one.

(in the afternoon on a day when the sun is shining)

1.

Position yourself in Foley Square, between the Story Corp structure and the fountain.

Press your thighs against the marble rim of the fountain.

Lean forward and get as close to the water as possible with your feet still on the ground.

Listen to the irregular streams of water flopping into the pool.

This water comes from a polluted underground spring.

It is poisoning the neighborhood.

2.

Turn from the fountain toward Thomas Paine Park.

Find the best tree and approach it.

Place you hand on the tree and find its pulse.

Wait until the pulse harmonizes with the bird’s conversations.

Burrow through the soil with your mind, until you find the man who is encased in the tree’s roots.

3.

Cross Center Street and climb the stairs of the courthouse.

Sit at the base of one of the middle columns and look back at the park.

The island of land is a topographical rift in time.

Cars race around it and do not notice.

To the left, a tepid swamp burbles over the curb.

To the right, the ground swells in a hill of chalk.

Teleportal is a proposed sound installation. The installation would take place in a large, acoustically divided room separated by a windowed wall.

On one side of the wall, a metronome keeps time. People are invited to explore this side. A microphone records this room, and the audio is recorded to a buffer the length of the installation.

Speakers in the other room broadcast audio from the miked room. There is an interface which allows participants to travel through time, acoustically

This project is an exploration of the effect of increased distance in time on sound. I’m drawing an analogy between radioactive decay and radio decay (sound decay)

The effect of increased distance in time reflects the way recordings in the real world decay (physical recording interfaces decay producing vinyl/cassette hiss, digital aliasing).

It also reflects the way real events decay in our collective memories (linearity is replaced by sentiment.

With enough distance from the present, sound is indistinguishable from vinyl static/ash/wind.

Implimentation:

I am creating a patch in Max/MSP that records audio from miked room to a long buffer. The patch also contains a granular synthesizer, and a sound player that plays a prepared loop of vinyl static and ash.

The participant specifies the amount of time relative to the present they would like to listen to, and this is used as a parameter which controls the length, overlap, density, and dilation of the granules. It also controls the mix between the audio from the room, and the prepared static.

Demonstrations:

1 second ago: sound is linear, almost indistinguishable from sound of the present - 1second

2 minutes ago: long granules overlap, close to linear arrangement - 2minutes

1 hour ago: shorter granules, more overlap, static mix creeps in - 1hour

2 days ago: short, jumbled, faint granules, static mix begins to dominate - 2days

8 days ago: metronome recognizable, static takes over – 8days

2 months ago: static is all that remains – 2months

I also played with the physicality I used in the video, trying to directly tie the idea of physical exertion, accumulated momentum needing to be built up in order to physically affect the surroundings.

I’m actually kind of into the room I’ve been working in – the common room in my apartment building which has ping pong, pool, and foosball tables….and drunk people, frequently. I may stage a workshop performance there this semester, then seek funding for set, rehearsal and performance space for a future incarnation. I experimented with projecting on a scrim, which will work, I just need a bigger one, and a projector with enough power.

The first video just shows the event on two channels simultaneously – with overlays timed with my sensor setup. They get a little out of phase because I did them separately then edited it all together.

The second video shows two fast attempts simultaneously jumping from my body. It looks interesting, but the super fast speed is a little goofy. Perhaps fewer frames would give the impression of fast movement, trails left behind. I like the idea that time gets compressed due to my running out of air, but I would like to experiment with the transparency of the prehended me’s correlated to their physical exertion, tied to the sensor as well, perhaps. A pressure sensor on the arm of the chair, probably.

Until from 75-15,000 years ago, Flushing was covered by a 1000 foot thick ice sheet that extended over much of Northeast America. When it receded, the top earth material was scraped away leaving a terminal moraine, composed of 500 million old bed rock – gneiss, marble. Old, old rock.

People have lived on this land off and on for the last 8,000 years. The Lenape, or Delaware Indians lived here. The Dutch colonized it and called it New Amsterdam. The English took it and called it New York. Since the Dutch came, New York has been a, primarily, commercial zone. Trading post, hub of industry. In the early 1900s, The Corona Ash dump covered the tidal marsh area that would be the park. Ash produced by coal burning furnaces in the city was dumped here daily. In the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes “Mt. Corona” as it was known as a symbol of industrial society’s decay and waste produced by the rich.

“This is the valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.”  - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The ash dump was a living fossil of the lifestyle that industrial New York lived.

In 1936, the Corona Ash dump was flattened into a 5km2 park that would be the site of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair. A commercial venture with a mid 20th century view towards the future. The fair ended in financial disaster because of poor accounting, and the eruption of WWII.

“Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made. They are all interesting and much effort has been expended to lay them before you in an interesting way. Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.” – New York World’s Fair Pamphlet

Ny-worldfair1939-noaudio

In 1964, the park again became the site of an (unsanctioned) World’s Fair.

The fair is best remembered as a showcase of mid-20th century American culture and technology. The nascent Space Age, with its vista of promise, was well-represented. At the center of the park stands the symbol of “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe” – the fair’s Unisphere symbol, depicting our earth of “The Space Age”.  It’s also the place where Disney’s Audio-Animatronic attraction, “It’s a Small World” debuted. More than 51 million people attended the fair.

Now, the park is again a fossil of this mid 20th century excitement for the future. The two structures remaining from the 64 World’s Fair are the Unisphere, and the New York State Pavilion and Observation Towers. The towers are readily visible from the highway, but derelict in person. They were built on temporary foundations, and no permanent use has been found. They stand at the edge of a parking lot, futuristic fossils.

I want to do a sound intervention on this site that unites three periods of this sites history that most interest me. An aural wormhole. The melting of the glacier, the ash dump, and the relic it is today. This place is a constantly evolving fossil. Temporary structures are built on it only to be left to decay. Ice, Ash, Metal, Space.

I’m a little unclear on what will actually be successful/feasible and produce the sounds/atmosphere I’m going for, but I’ve got a couple of ideas to pitch.

1. Producing and listening to the resonant frequencies of the towers themselves. Either, bringing giant speakers and blasting low frequencies until I find the sweet spot. Physically vibrating the towers until they produce sound. This could be dangerous because I’ve read they were built on temporary foundations and could collapse if this were too successful.

2. Digging small holes in the ground around the towers until I reach the layers of ash and bedrock. Either finding the resonant frequencies of the open cylinders (the holes in the ground), or placing contact microphones on the surfaces. This could be hard because I don’t have effective hole digging equipment, especially if I need to dig really deep holes. This may also not sound very interesting (contact microphones on rocks).

I’m interested in the idea of listening to fossils and having them reveal something about their creation. In order for this idea to be clear, I will process the source material and mix it with disembodied/disintegrating sounds of their creation. There should be flashes of coal burning furnaces. Flashes of ice cracking and melting. Flashes of audio from space missions in the 60s. Flashes of the Disney “Small World” ride. I don’t want this to sound like a jumble. I don’t imagine just playing all the sounds at one time. I want to evoke the idea of an aural wormhole.

tripod.worldsfair.soundwalk

I took an approach to the sound walk that is somewhere between Janet Cardiff and Tarkovsky. This place interests me. This place that is such a landmark, so visible and identifiable, and yet so purposeless. What are those weird futurist towers in the distance. What are they for?  What did they do and why have they been allowed to stand only to decay. Why were they saved in the first place. Should they be allowed to return to the ash heap they came from.

I’m interested in the history of this place and the ghosts that inhabit it. It is not an interesting place in and of itself, which is why I did my walk through a blending of times.