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An audible “reset.” We have all experienced it at one time or another. Take our experiences in NYC for example. The city is loud. The throngs of chatty pedestrians, the roaring traffic and even the Mr. Softee truck loudly idling. Our brains are in full throttle consuming and processing all these sound waves whether we are aware of them or not. But you round a corner or step into a building and you are equally engulfed by silence. Or is it silence? Your ears are tingling and every hushed conversation or shuffling of feet rings in your ears. What is that? Is your brain still functioning on overdrive to accommodate all the sounds that attacked you just moments ago?

The goal of “Reset” is to intentionally calibrate your brain to function in a high-noise environment and abruptly return you to your setting but with different ears and a new awareness.

The experiment
The setup is really easy … but you may annoy your neighbors for a few moments. Go ahead and find yourself a power strip and some noisy appliances. They don’t all have to be the exceptionally loud type but it is important that they have a on/off state. While unplugged we want to make sure they are placed on the “on” state.

Got everything? Ok, so lets make some noise.

1.) Take a moment — 1 minute — and sit in silence and observe your surroundings.

2.) Take another minute and make note of what you hear.

3.) With your power strip in the “off” position begin plugging your appliances in. Make sure all of your selected appliances are in the “on” position.

4.) With everything plugged in turn the power strip on.

5.) Listen for 5 minutes. Yeah, seems like a long time but you really want it to sink in and get your brain working hard to process the sounds. Ignore your neighbors banging on the wall.

6.) Turn the power strip off.

7.) Take a minute — or longer — to write what you hear now. Is it different? do things stand out more. Is something there that you didn’t hear before.? Why do you think it is different?

Notation and video

“Reset” is an extension of our earlier assignment to create a notation of our sounds piece. The concept and idea for the experiment came before the notation so that is what you are seeing here. An instruction manual on how to “perform” the experiment. Unless I can come up with some other way of creating a notation for “Reset” it will more than likely be read as instructions very similar to what I have shown above … but aren’t instructions and notation one and the same? Anyway, I am going to give it a shot and post the notation along with a video of someone performing “Reset” along with their written response.

Click on image below for visual explanation (words are so overrated).

More details to come … work in progress.

Video here:

Project (working) title: NYCymphony

Project description:
NYCymphony is a musical happening. It seeks to place the powerful, yet fragile symphonic moments of an orchestra tuning up, into a public space in New York City.
It begins with the whisper of a violin, distant and solitary at first, cutting through the ambient noise of New York City.  Delicately, other strings trickle into existence.  Seemingly on cue, a cello pulses like a foghorn through the sea of yellow cabs. Not to be outdone, the bassoon bellows its arrival. Other woodwinds dance their way into throngs of pedestrians. The brass enters. The percussion arrives. The sounds engulf the area, swirling with choreographed chaos. As if reaching some agreed upon climax, the orchestra begins to extinguish itself. It draws back into the hum of the city machine, awaiting its revival. For a moment the city held its breath in anticipation.

How
The logistics of the happening would require a network of hidden sound systems atop buildings or structures surrounding a pre-defined location. The different sound systems would represent the different parts of the instrument ensemble. For example, a classical orchestra is made up of 4 sections: woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. Each section would have its own dedicated location and would be programmed to play and stop at different times during the performance. The multiple sources of sound and resulting “canyon effect” would give the sense of being engulfed from all sides by an orchestra.

Site
There are many ideal sites for NYCymphony. One example would be Times Square. This would be a great location for a number of reasons.
-High pedestrian traffic: The bigger the audience the better.
-Plenty of ambient noise: The happening would erupt unexpectedly, seem to come out of nowhere and have no identifiable source.
-Canyon effect: There are numerous tall buildings and structures to install the different sounds systems to create a truly surround-sound experience.
-Juxtaposition: In a location where sound becomes “background noise,” the emergence of a symphony would be so foreign to the normal sound scape people would have a hard time not stopping to figure out what is going on.

Example: Click here for sample sound of orchestra tuning up

Possible applications
This being an outdoor sound installation, the audience is the greater public. As a marketing tool, it has the potential of reaching a very targeted group of people — patrons of the arts. What better way promote the new season or a special performance of the New York Philharmonic? This is just an example.

Assignment: make a sound walk of a neighborhood.

Click on the image below to go to sound walk:

Deep listening exercise

The assignment for this week was to go to one of our favorite places in New York and do a deep listening exercise (link to audio clip below). It did not take very long to come up with the location but there was one problem: it is one of my favorite places in all of New York because it so quiet! Tucked away in the American Wing and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a reconstruction of the Living Room from the Little House in Wayzata, Minnesota (1912-14)  built by Frank Lloyd Wright. I have been going to this room at the MET for years. It is a sanctuary to me for two reasons. 1) It is a beautifully designed room and 2) it is so rarely visited in the museum (most people don’t even know it is there) that when you are there it is exceptionally peaceful. So much so that you want to jump the railing and sit in one of the chairs and chill out for while.

So for this exercise the isolation was great since I am hesitant to record with an audience but the solitude of the room and lack of anything but a chorus of static furniture  made for very uneventful recording.

The first staging of  the deep listening exercise went well. Not a soul walked into the room with me. The only noise that I was aware of were people walking in and out of the American Wing doors just outside of the living room. So after 10 minutes I picked up my bag and the recorder and headed out. I made a stop just outside of the American Wing to review my recording, which I though was going to be pure silence only to find I had recorded pure nothing. I did not hit the record button correctly. This recorder that I borrowed requires that you hit the button twice to record. Great. So I go in to record again but this time there were a few people that strolled in. Nobody raised there voices so there really wasn’t much to be recorded. People tend to speak in very hushed tones when they are in that room.

For the most part I kept my eyes closed while listening but if someone was near me I would pop my eyes open because I imagined it looked pretty strange to have this tall guy just standing there in total silence with a recorder at his feet in front of him on the floor. The second or third time I popped my eyes open there was an older lady next to me reading the little information sheet about the room. She was obviously a tour guide stopping in to refresh her memory for the next tour and if you listen closely to the recording you can hear she and I chatting a little about the room and, oddly enough, about her son who is a sound engineer who graduate from Tisch.

Deep listening response:
Note: my response is a mixture of the actual listening exercise and past experiences during my times in the space. The writing just kind of evolved that way.

Aware of my surroundings as I walk in and now standing with my eyes closed I find that the absence of sound makes it hard to visualize an audible landscape. But I know this room. I know this room well. It’s Wright’s room. It’s my room. I know where all the furniture is. Strategically designed and placed throughout. With the absence of sound and the comfort of a familiar setting I am free to let my mind roam. I know where I am. I know this room well. I have sat in its chairs. Lounged along the windowsills looking out. The peace of my surroundings remind me of where I am. But sound invades my space. Distant at first. I am not sure they are bound for my haven. At first, only indecipherable whispers. But as they come closer and their guided words take shape, their presence is felt within my room. With my eyes now open, I see that I am back in the Living Room. Pointed eyes take in the room with me and I realize that I alone do not know this room. We all know this room. We all now know this room well.

Sound clip: Click on link below (Full 10-minute clip to come)

WrightLivingRoom_snippet

My first introduction to actively listening was very interesting and lead me to a pretty interesting revelation about how I listen or hear. I have come to realize that I can’t listen without visualizing what it is I am hearing or trying to hear. I have a hard time just listening to the world around me simply for the sake of taking in sounds. For example, during the listening exercise (see below) I heard people outside of the room walk by and heard the creaking of the old floor boards. But I didn’t just hear the creaking floor boards. I found myself visualizing the boards falling beneath the weight of the person walking on them and the nails creaking in protest to hold them (the boards) down.

Response to listening exercise:

I hear the deep, inner-workings of the building. A rumbling. If it weren’t for the vent above my head it would seem like some distant “thing.” The whistling vent reminds me that it works for me.