CITIZEN
About
CITIZEN is an interactive installation that creates a fantastical city soundscape from recordings of instrumental sounds. The visitor chooses an action or destination through a simple graphical user interface and the soundscape changes around them. Some recordings aim to be as representative as possible of the sound they mimic; others are more interpretive of an aural experience, or seek to render audible a visual or tactile sensation.
I am a ‘city person’; I have always lived in densely populated areas, and that’s where I feel most at home. When outside that environment, I need time to adjust to the soundscape of wind, animals, waves, or silence. But, discussions of urban sounds are predominantly negative; they are ‘noise’, to be fought, regulated, and controlled.
Anthropologist Mary Douglas defined dirt as ‘matter out of place’; recently, noise has come to be defined as ‘sound out of place’. The sounds that dominate the city are those of transportation, construction, and industry — the very things that enable a city to exist.
It is indisputable that, at certain levels, sound can cause physical and psychological ailments; but, as we strive for healthier cities, CITIZEN suggests a way of listening to the urban sounds beneath that threshold, finding fascination or even beauty in the textures and dynamism they create, individually or in combinations. Within this, CITIZEN provides hints of a more personal story about the mixture of familiar, unfamiliar, and alienating environments that a city provides.
MacOS only — Windows version coming soon. Headphone listening strongly recommended.
Recordings by Laura Cocks (flutes), Ryan Muncy (saxophones) and Joel Rust (strings).