Proposal for Sound and the City

Sunset Park has long been the home of working class immigrants in New York. Starting with a significant Norwegian, Finnish, Irish and Polish population who lived off the sweat of their brows in the 19th century, the neighborhood came to be a major worldwide shipping hub in subsequent years. Sunset Park’s Bush Terminal rose to become the center of international manufacturing and shipping in New York Harbor. By World War II, it was responsible for expediting 80% of American goods borne for foreign lands.

    Later on when “white flight” affected large areas of New York City, Sunset Park was not immune. With this vacuum came falling property values and an influx of South American and Chinese inhabitants. The former came to live mainly between 4th and 5th avenues, and the latter between 7th and 8th. These two ethnic groups’ rise to prominence came in parallel, with very little cultural cross-pollination.

    My audio installation aims to link these groups by creating a mutual, yet separate environment where human emotion, stripped of nearly all cultural trappings, can exist for a moment to be viewed by another.

    I will post signs on telephone poles and shops in these neighborhoods and offer to pick up any appliances that utilize audio speakers as part of their function. Over several weeks I plan to collect several dozen speakers of differing size and type. As we know, speakers receive electrical impulses and translate them into mechanical motion. This motion sends out pressure waves through a medium, which our ears perceive as sound. Of course, the reverse can also happen. If pressure waves are received by speakers, they can be translated into small electrical impulses.

    During a test, a 3 inch, 8 ohm speaker generated a maximum of 35 mV and 4 mA when screamed into. With many such speakers linked together in an array, enough electricity can be produced to light a small lightbulb.

    The installation will consist of many speakers arranged circularly like the petals of a flower, with a nearly opaque plastic shield in the center, representing a pistil. An LED will backlight this shield, revealing a provocative written message when illuminated (perhaps simply “yes”, as an homage to Yoko Ono’s 1966 “Ceiling Painting”). Hidden behind the flower will be a camera that uploads video to an online network.

    Near the flower will be a digital meter that tracks the voltage and amperage of the flower’s auditory input. A placard will instruct the user that they will receive a message once they “red line” the meter. The user will generate enough sound with his/her voice to receive the message, which will then be used as a password on a nearby computer terminal. The password will allow the user to view a video identical in format to the one they just created, but across the neighborhood where the other ethnic group resides.

    There will be two of these stations in the aforementioned sub-neighborhoods of Sunset Park. The aim is to create inter-cultural connection through the innocence and universality of non-language-based vocalization.