Urban Music

Quiet sounds. Missing notes. Symphony of Life

Wu-Hsi Li, MIT Media Laboratory
Anna Huang, MIT Media Laboratory
Chih-Yu Chao, MIT CSAIL
Noah Vawter, MIT Media Laboratory

<Episode>

The sounds in our lives quietly convey abundant information and emotions.

In the subway station, the beeping sound signals "please proceed", and the buzzing sound alerts that "you cannot pass".
The short honk from a car is a warning sign, while the long honk means "@#$!$%^&@#~*!!"
Students hear the freedom from the bell at the end of class.
Mothers hear the anxiety in the siren from the ambulance.
From the sound of the plane's turbine engine, these sounds immediately invoke the landscape of my hometown.

If we consider this landscape as “music”, we abandon the desire for complicated harmony, or counterpoint and understand them instead as signifiers of our lives.

<Approaches>

By walking through the city, group participants will collect sounds of the urban environment.  How can we create auditory interaces that make un-familiar the familiar sounds around us and re-present the rhthyms of everyday life?