Field Recordings for the Five Points

From the Tenement Museum comes this great audio exploration of the former Five Points area in Manhattan. (Actually, it’s a few years old, but new to me!)

You have five points to drag around the map and select from a variety of field recordings, folk songs, spoken word (interviews, sermons, etc.), and some music made specifically for the project. Once you’ve found sounds you like (like “steam through a manhole cover” or “seafood salesman”), you can adjust levels and panning and then save your mix for others to listen to!

Clicking directly on the dots brings up a little info pane so you can find out more about what you’re hearing. This is sort of a complementary project to the Ohio Is a Piano project. Instead of focusing on a data-centric correspondence (88 keys, 88 counties), Folk Music for the Five Points takes a cultural/historical look back. They justify the inclusion of new music by saying that the composer is taking the perspective of a “new immigrant” (although it seems just like a way to make the project more conventionally musical), and their interest is thematic: the daily experience of immigrants in a particular section of New York.

I wouldn’t want to judge one kind of approach superior to the other, but it is certainly interesting to see the different kinds of results that arise from the two approaches.

Two stories on the NYT website this morning about public art ambient sound installations in New York:

Sound Tunnel: Avant-Garde Park Portrait

John Morton recorded sounds around Central Park to be played through speakers in a tunnel near the Central Park Zoo. They start after the chimes every half hour, with modulated versions of the chimes themselves, and then a variety of other sounds and noises, of animals, musicians, children, etc. You can hear some samples here.

A Calming Presence Amid the Groans and Screeches

A proposal is currently in the works to play nature sounds in the subway station at 96th Street and Broadway, supposedly to remind commuters of the pastoral history of the area. The NYT points out that as the work is accompanied by a sculptural installation of cartoony steel flowers, the effect is more likely to be cheekily artistic than soothingly pastoral (not that I have a problem with the cheekily artistic!).

It’s nice to see two new public sound works that introduce sounds into the environment.

The John Morton work in the park is a great way to revitalize the sonic experience of walking under a tunnel, hearing park sounds, but altered so that you take notice. I imagine the effect of hearing the usual bells echoed by a warbled and distorted version under a nearby tunnel would be quite nice.

The subway work, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to take as much account of its surroundings. Yes, 96th street used to be pastoral, but so did the rest of Manhattan, so what makes this a special comment about its specific location? It’s possible that the NYT hasn’t picked up on whatever the actual artists’ point is, so we’ll have to wait and see when/if it becomes a reality.