Reemerged Soundscape

City, Sounds, and I

As an urban dweller having lived in cities all my life, I have found the soundscape of the modern urban environment distinctively profound. The different components of the city life create layers and layers of audible characteristics that weave together into a composition that is appearingly chaotic in aesthetics yet symphonic in essence.

A quick internet search of “city sounds” will guide you to the whizzing traffic, construction noises, or just the ambience of the crowds. The presence of the people in the urban soundscape as individuals is largely dampened by the overwhelming roar of machines. In cases where the machines are absent, our constant pursuits of private space in the cities tell us to ignore the sounds of the others, with assistance from recently popular technologies like noise-cancelling headphones etc. In an era of overtly expressive fashion and hyper connected social media, it is ironic that we are foregoing the opportunity presented by air/sound as a medium to convey individuality.

Walking and Sound-making

In a subway station, commuters walk from one train to another towards the destinations in mind. The multiplicity of the sound of commuting/walking resembles the sound of economics, cultures, and politics. Going to work, we walk. Going to school, we walk. Going to vote, we walk. The movement of people shapes the aesthetics of the sounds made. For celebration, we walk and make sounds. On Lunar New Years, Chinese performers parade in Chinatown for the prosperity of the new year. The celebratory sounds remark the existence of the vibrant diasporic community in New York City. Parades of all kinds are inherently similar that the participants express identities through walking and sound-making while conveying joyful messages.

Walking and sound-making may always be a pathway for identities to be explored; the messages conveyed are not always jubilant. In the past year, we have witnessed protests around the country demanding justice for those who died in the hands of brutal and racist police conduct. While people of all races march and shout “Black Lives Matter” in unity, the sensational soundscape creates a magnetic field attracting the empathic individuals to join force amplifying the voice from the oppressed. With tools like digital cameras, internet, and social media, the sheer power of such soundscape transcends to dimensions beyond the physical sites.

It is undeniably evident that walking and sound-making are two of the most political elements of urban living. Not necessarily solving an existing practical problem, the project instead aims to explore the possibility of an intervention that utilizes these observations to reimagine a soundscape that is curious and critical yet meaningfully fun.

Before the Imagination

Following the observations on the operations of soundscape from my personal perspective, the project takes a turn and begins its survey phase that digs into the relationship between urban residents and the soundscapes of their locations. A probe is designed and distributed via websites in English and Chinese to my friends and families. It prompted the participants to take a 10-min long walk around their public space of choice, either indoor or outdoor, without the distractions of smartphones and headphones; then, after the walk, a series of reflective questions engages the participants to a deeper level.

These questions include the following:

What was the most memorable sound that you heard during this walk?

Was there noise? How would you describe the “noise”?

Name one or more sounds that you feel like is missing during the walk if you can. Or if any sound that could be louder in your opinion.

Listen to your recording again. Close your eyes.

Try imaging yourself in a different space with the recorded sound other than where you took the walk. Briefly describe that place.

LEGO

Upon receiving the audible fragments from the participants, a mix of all individual tracks is created for evaluation. The concurrent playings of certain recording combinations seemed miraculously harmonic and transcendental. A recording of a female participant walking on sidewalks in winter boots in the United States overlapping another participant’s upload of the vibrant post-pandemic park life in Wuhan is one of the handful combinations that just worked. Such soundscape does not exist in real life, yet it totally could be. I’d like to think of the mixture as an audible LEGO play session: combining the seemingly irrelevant components together to create something new and potentially meaningful.

My Father’s Keychain

To bridge sound-making with walking behavior and recreate a soundscape, a mechanism is much needed. I proposed a mechanism that would turn walking input and identity choice into sound-making. This is not a new concept. My father’s keychain does precisely this: a collection of unique objects (keys) creating a distinct sound that directly reflects his physical movement. Pushing forward with this mechanism, Reemerged Soundscape should enable participants to make sounds that were impossible while preserving the intuitiveness of a keychain full of keys.

Playground and Painting

After the devices, the space for the participants to interact follows immediately. In what kind of space should this project be taking place? A temple for soundplay as a playground for walkplay? The interlaced sounds and movements of the people are like the painter’s brush on a blank canvas. The canvas may not be the point, but its dimensions actively influence the dynamics of the composition.

A Collaboration with Aaron

How should the mechanism be morphed into something tangible? Digital or analogue? Or both? Or does it truly matter? After having researched into Raspberry Pi, dabbled with Arduino, and numerous interviews with friends, I know this would be a tremendous amount of groundwork just to get familiar with coding and programming. Finally, I was able to invite my friend Heteng “Aaron” Li from University of Washington Seattle on board for this ride. With his expertise in Android programming, I am able to focus on parts of the project that are less tedious. The adoption of Android devices also significantly reduced the costs of this project. With the necessary motion sensors, media players, and batteries already integrated, many used Android phones like the Google Pixel 3A can be found for $50 USD with minimal damage. The screen on the device also provides possibility for user interactive contents and visual functions.

Two Modes of Noise-making

Using the integrated sensors on the Android devices, the program detects walking behavior and turns the input into a command for the media player to start or pause. Two separate modes of mechanism are stride mode and continuous mode.

In stride mode, the device will play the chosen soundtrack when a step is detected. Short soundtracks are required for this function to work as intended. As demonstrated in the video, the mode can change the tactility of walking entirely. High heel sound and Super Mario’s jump sound effect are just two of the countless ways that this device could be employed.

In continuous mode, the device constantly detects walking behavior. As the device is being moved, the media player plays the soundtrack of choice. This mode is suitable for audio messages or soundscape recordings that turns the walking into something spatially transcendental and politically meaningful.

A Loud Fashion Accessory

The android device has to be worn on the body for the software to function. An enclosure for the device is needed. What should it look like? What can it look like? I asked myself what kind of device I would wear: if anything, it should be a statement piece, a fashion accessory. Vibrant colors and dramatic shapes are essential. The dramatic shape shall not be just a pretty but useless element of the design.

The outcome is an enclosure with two conic loudspeakers and a cable on the back. The larger exponential cone on the bottom amplifies the sound played out from the main speaker pointing downwards; the smaller cone on the top is designed to work with the front facing speaker, commonly found on recent smartphones. A cutout is specially designed to accommodate the UI of the software.

CAD model of the enclosure is parametric, making it easily configurable to meet the various dimensions of smartphones on the second hand market. The holder is designed to fit devices as large as iPhone Pro Plus line with minimal changes. All geometry features are designed with FDM 3D printing in mind, optimizing for bridging parameters and minimal support materials. Every part of the model should be able to fit on the most common 3D printers on the market.

Sounds of Identity

I am not a sound artist and I have little talent when it comes to making sounds even after having played the violin for my entire childhood. The sounds included in the very first version of the software for this capstone project are sampled from the recordings sent from my friends and families, captured from the internet, or composed in GarageBand on my iPad.

With the limited time and resources, I could never finish archiving all the interesting sounds in this world and add them to this project. The series shown here is merely a starting point and a demonstration of the idea. The project shall expand in the next phase, and potentially attract the attention of talented sound artists and curators alike to help the sound collection grow bigger and better. The collections can be curated in different themes to help build a cohesive soundscape that fulfills whatever intentions the organizer may have.

Reemerged Soundscape can operate individually in the open urban space or as a collaborative program as shown in the diagram below. I envision the project to be easily converted into a vehicle for soundscapes interaction. To collaborate with different soundscape archives, the toolset can truly bring the interactive experience to another level that is never before achievable.

Wild Dream

As the last bit of the project, the spatial design for the proposed exhibition is mainly to help frame the project in a more tangible and visual way. Without practicality as a concern, the space is designed completely hypothetically.

Each of the two arenas has a concave floor allowing for amplification of the sounds made in the space while providing an unconventional walking experience requiring participants to pay attention to their walks. The long foyer doubles as both a storage space for the devices and a buffer zone distancing the arenas from the outside world. The yellow sofas shown here are designed for those who do not wish to participate actively in the sound making process but still want to observe as bystanders.

Android program developed in collaboration with Heteng Li

This project would not be complete without the contribution or inspiration from

Amanda Huynh, Cassie Liu, Cynthia Smith & Julie Pastor at Cooper Hewitt, Heteng Aaron Li, Hunter Wolff, Indonesia Jaco, Jinran Steven Dai, Kevin Walz, Leo Zhang, Mom and Dad, Ninghui Yang, Ricky Ruihong Li, Sitai Chen, Xiangni Song, Xiwen Su