Different Cities

The idea of portraying New York City in sound had its first major realization in the Ear to the Earth Festival in October 2008 in which the primary theme was the New York soundscape, conceived, first, in the knowledge that more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities and, second, by the idea that an important way of understanding cities was by listening to them.

Taking its name from the psychoacoustic research model of a ‘listening head’ called Fritz that wears microphones instead of ears, the major audio event of the festival was called New York Big Fritz, and the idea was portraying Times Square in sound around the clock. The project began as an experiment created by Agnieszka Roginska, faculty member at the Music Technology Program at NYU. Her idea was to gain knowledge of different urban environments throughout the world by analyzing the sound fields in central locations within the cities. New York was to be the starting point. Times Square was the central location. And the project quickly became a collaboration between Electronic Music Foundation and NYU Music Technology faculty members Agnieszka Roginska, Paul Geluso, Tom Beyer, Robert Rowe, myself, and graduate students Izzi Ramkissoon and Sandeep Ravindranath.

Roginska and Geluso worked out the technology for making sound field recordings of Times Square at different times of day. Izzi Ramkissoon and Sandeep Ravindranath made hour-long recordings at midnight, 6am, noon, and 6pm, four recordings in all. The recordings were given to four NYU composers — Robert Rowe, Tom Beyer, Paul Geluso, and myself — to use as basic material for sound-field compositions. Roginska said: “It sounds beautiful. And the spatial effect is absolutely superb … The audience will hear Times Square. But better than in Times Square, because they’ll be hearing it through the ears of artists.”

As one direct result of producing that festival, I began to hear city sounds in a different way, not as irritating noise but as fascinating and complex sounds, varied, rich in timbral change, and stunning in their power and immediacy. And since I viewed the Big Fritz sounds as audio icons of New York, I used the recordings of Times Square in two independent compositions.

The first composition was Many Times Times Square, first presented at the opening of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, on December 23, 2012, as an ongoing spatial sound. The next composition was Different Cities, presented at the NYU Interactive Arts Series, New York, on March 4, 2013, as a short statement of the idea.

Many Times Times Square

Different Cities

Many Times Times Square and Different Cities were not based only on my fascination in the Times Square sounds, it also represented a cycle of perception and reflection, a cycle of our perception of an external reality followed by our inner reflection of understanding. We engage and then we step back and think, understanding our experience from different perspectives, in different contexts, and with different narratives, creating for ourselves, in other words, different cities.

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For other compositions, click on a title

Blues Mix 1966
Albany Music 3 1966
Jack in January 1967
Street Scene 1967

Drift 1970
Ideas of Movement at Bolton Landing 1971
Echoes 1972

From The 14th On 1973

Flowers 1975
Settings for Spirituals 1977

Solo 1978
Scenes from Stevens 1979
Follow Me Softly 1984

After Some Songs 1995
Spring Drum with Pierre’s Words 1997

Many Times … 2001
One World 1 2006
Micro Fictions 2009
Different Cities 2013