We live in an incredibly noisy world. While reading this, there may be the sound of distant traffic, a siren from a firetruck or ambulance, the hum of an exhaust, a snoring roommate, or even some tracks from your favorite artist. It's so common that, in fact, some people are unable to perform necessary and basic survival actions without noise. Sedatephobia is the fear of silence and has had a steadily climbing number of cases over the decades. But most of us are more familiar with the concept of white noise or ambient music. The soothing voice of Samuel Ervin Beam of Iron & Wine or Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. But on the other hand, there are, what are coyly named, audiophiles. These are people with musical obsessions where everything from the type of equipment used to the room that the song is listened in can affect their enjoyment of a song.
Now this sounds quite melodramatic. Sure, there's people on both extremes but for the common man, music holds little command over our day to day experience...or so you might think. Through this investigation of sound, I want to explore our perception of space through the lens of acoustics. How does our engagement with music effect our experience of the built environment? And if so, can architecture be remixed through music?
My name is Michael Bair, and this is the Reformist.
INSPIRATION
Meet Eric Eberhardt, he is a man from San Francisco and creator of the website "You are Listening to", a bizarre and aberrant website that takes images of famous cities like Chicago, Austin, Baltimore, and Boston, plays often wordless and pneumatic music from a playlist on SoundCloud, and finishes it off with an overlay of a police dispatch radio feed. The effect is surreal experience of a city that immediately roots the listen among the cities atmosphere. The almost indiscernible speech between live radios is only match in strangeness and awe as the musical accompaniment, both creating a soundtrack to the night-bathed skyline of New York or San Francisco
TO LISTEN FOR YOURSELF, CLICK HERE: youarelistening.to/newyork
Eric Eberhardt's "You are Listening to..." combines music, imagery, and a touch of reality to identify a sense of place
In an interview with Roman Mars of 99% Invisible, (a wonderful podcast that actually introduced me to this website), Eric Eberhardt says he got the idea from when the Giants had won the World Series in 2010 and was looking on Twitter for information about the celebrations. What he kept seeing were people saying to listening in on the police radio feed. As he describes it, after a while he got bored and put on some of his music and there was a type of "synergy" between them.
Music has been paying attention to "synergy" for as long as artists defined the term "prosody". Prosody deals with the composition of the music and how lyrics and notes relate with each other. As we emphasis words naturally when we speak, so must our music match the lyrics like a stressed word working alongside a lower pitch for emphasis. But is it possible that music and architecture hold a sort of prosody without us realizing it.
So, I ask... can music REMIX our architecture to bring a new feeling to the built world?
DISCOVERIES
I work in a small architecture firm in western Roxbury. On the weekends, I like to explore the Greater Boston area by means of the MBTA or "T" system. One day, I had to take the transit to Downtown Crossing and walk from the station to Children's Wharf Park near the harbor. The T was crowded, Boston drivers were unpleasant, and everyone walk at a very fast pace. As I walked down Summer Street, I began noticing that certain songs became to work symbiotically with the buildings around me. Most notably buildings with dynamic form like the Bank of America Financial Center or United Shoe Machinery Building captured my eyes and danced around in my imagination while highly detailed and dramatic facade buildings like South Station were visual playgrounds. Whenever my audio and visual perception aligned, I felt myself dancing and removed from my previous laments. I began to record the music that made me feel invigorated and compiled them in a Spotify Playlist. I did the same with my trip to the Arnold Arboretum the next week
TO LISTEN TO DOWNTOWN CROSSING YOURSELF, CLICK HERE: https://open.spotify.com/user/bairjmichael/playlis...
TO LISTEN TO THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM YOURSELF, CLICK HERE: https://open.spotify.com/user/bairjmichael/playlis...
To sample my findings, I took two random songs, Miracle Mile by Cold War Kids and New Slang by The Shins, one from each playlist. I then converted the MP3 files to WAV image format.
Miracle Mile by Cold War Kids
New Slang by The Shins
Three aspects immediately show: the beginning, the content, and the end.
- Miracle Mile: Fast and andante opening, higher amplitudes and density, sudden and climatic ending
- New Slang: Building opening, rolling waves, lingering choral and almost adagio fade
Taking this into account, notice the surroundings in context of each song:
Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA, 02108
Note the surrounding buildings and strong correlation to the structure of songs like Miracle Mile. We have sudden peaks (skyscrapers), certainly higher density, a sense of movement by looking at the infrastructure. By looking at our music consumption, the structure of songs like Miracle Mile resonate in the urban environment. The specific building is the Bank of America Financial Center, a prime example of the dynamic presentation in Downtown Boston.
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston, MA, 02130
Note the radically different construction of this garden. There's neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain nearby and brutal concrete structures for medical and MBTA buildings. But not the diffusion my a counterbalance in vegetation. The vegetation blends architecture into nature by a series of concealing and revealing. The forest's nonuniform structure means songs like New Slang sustains the atmosphere and harmony in architecture and nature. The specific building is the State Lab, an institution anchored to the garden and a prime example of perception to architecture changing based on music.
In a way, listening to music does not REMOVE us from the urban or natural environment. In the case of these two songs, it enhanced it, filling the audio bridge between our eyes and our experience. It takes our surrounds and... remixes it, offering a new look of a familiar concept. I didn't feel the urge to dance just looking at buildings and I didn't feel the urge to go sightseeing while listening to Spotify. But with harmony, buildings at the urban center of cities become energetic and excited, structures of the natural setting become companions, or walkways become dance floors.
REFORMED!
As designers, we can reinvent our day to day lives. We're given natural gifts like vision, smell, and taste to explore our world and its offerings. Yet, often we forget that sound plays an immense role in our experiences. Sounds root us in times and in spaces and how we respond to sound says a lot about how we buildings and why we find certain buildings engaging or atrocious.
If a certain building or place feels inhuman or distant, try plugging in your earbuds, lifting your headphones, or even play some music yourself outdoors. Maybe you're not listening close enough...or perhaps you just need to listen for something new.
Or maybe I'm looking for an excuse for dancing in public ❤
