Emily Glass

A Selection from Sound in Sound: How We Perceive and Recall the Urban Soundscape 2022

Made using a Zoom H5 audio recorder, Audio Technica AT2022 stereo X/Y microphone, AT125 shotgun microphone, smartphone microphone.

2 minutes 56 seconds

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What does the city sound like? What do the city’s sounds tell us about urban life? What do people’s opinions and recollections of these sounds mean? Do they matter?

The selection provided from this piece explores the relationship between urban geography, auditory perception, and memory while drawing attention to ambient sound. The sounds in this piece, collected from Washington Square and Union Square Parks in early 2022, aim to guide the listener through their own perceptions of the soundscapes of urban greenspaces.

The entire project employs three interlocking methods—ethnographic investigation of peoples’ attitudes toward urban soundscapes, analysis of ambient audio recordings, and a composition building these recordings into this exploratory “sound work”—that provide rich material for interpretation. In the sound work, environmental sound takes the lead, while the human voice serves as a transitional and supplemental track. This idea of inversion also becomes apparent in the project as a whole, as the sound work is the central component, with the extensive written text being provided as an important supplement. This project presents the sound work as a manifestation of scholarly argument, rather than an adjunct to it. This open-ended, eclectic format thus embodies an argument about sound in sound.

emilyglass. carrd.co / https://on.soundcloud.com/rDs7xNm3EYmfLntp8