Noise annoys

[imomus]

Back in June 2005, when I was here for a performance art show, I wrote a rather scathing rumination on the poverty of New York textures, wondering why the world's richest country should have some of the world's poorest interfaces. The texture of everyday life -- the tactile quality of the environment we move through -- is something I'm thinking about rather intensely right now because I have to address the AIGA conference at the weekend on the subject of "the future of texture".

Back in 2005 I framed sound pollution as one of New York's textural problems. "Sound is texture too: New York is so noisy I get tinnitus. I'm writing this in a room with an incredibly noisy fan, a deafening garbage truck outside, and a police siren behind that. The examples could go on and on." This year, those examples did go on and on. The clanging, honking, wailing, crashing and shouting was the first thing that hit me in New York. Berlin must be a super-quiet city. Here I have to wear ear protectors the whole time.



A f'rinstance. Yesterday I was at PS1 in Queens. The cafe was shut (even the water seemed shut off at PS1, which felt sadly neglected) so I went to eat lunch at a cheap Chinese place nearby. It was under the elevated subway stop, so every couple of minutes trains would clank round the bend a few feet above us, making an incredible metallic din. Inside the restaurant, though, things were no better. A plasma-screen TV was showing an action movie featuring continuous gunfire.

You'd think the controlled environment of an art museum would be different, but no, it was the same story in PS1 itself. The show Organizing Chaos is described in the blurb as "physically centered around the Luke Fowler video, Pilgrimage from Scatter Points (2006). The 45-minute piece incorporates archival footage and documentary material about British composer Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, an improvisational group that utilized found, graphic scores rather than traditional sheet music".



Well, great: Luke Fowler is one of my favourite artists, and his Cardew film certainly fits into the Organizing Chaos sound art theme of ambience and randomness. There's just one problem, though, one step too far into randomness: although the label tells us we're watching "Pilgrimage from Scatter Points", the film being shown is actually "What You See is Where You’re At", Fowler's 2001 documentary about anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing.

It isn't just the wrong documentary, it's also being shown in the wrong conditions. It's impossible to hear the speech on the Fowler soundtrack (issuing through tiny, tinny speakers mounted high on the wall of the echoey room) because the gallery is filled with overspill sound from the installation next door, mingled with the sound of Christian Marclay's "Guitar Drag" video on the other side of the building. This over-exposed piece shows an amplified guitar being dragged along behind a pick-up truck. It makes a godawful racket, which, at PS1, drowned out the quieter pieces in all the connected galleries.

But if it hadn't been the macho Marclay piece making the quieter, more thoughtful Fowler video inaudible, it would have been the rushing roar of the air conditioners or the absurdly loud, garbled transmissions coming from the guards' walkie talkies (yes, the "paranoid security state" follows you even into the inner sanctum of the aesthetic experience). Even the picture is compromised: the DVD machine's on the blink and keeps flashing chapter heading information in a blue band across the screen. I sit there truly saddened by a missed opportunity to see a really interesting piece.

What on earth were the curators thinking? Is the act of selecting the piece all that matters to them? We didn't even see the film they chose! Is the content of the piece, the artist's intention, and the point-of-consumption experience of the viewer irrelevant? Is running a gallery like PS1 just a constant struggle against various forms of chaotic entropy (the aircon is broken, the DVD player is acting up, the wrong disk arrived from Fowler's gallery in Glasgow, we can't stop the guards getting bored and using their radios too much, we couldn't get insulating curtains to stop soundspill happening...) Do the curators think that we won't notice that it's the wrong film, and that it's inaudible? Do they think we just look at the picture for ten seconds then pass on? Is the fact that Cage is in this show an indication that we're supposed to treat all the ambient sound as "music" and just relax and go with the flux and the flow?

Or is it just that a New York art gallery treats sound pretty much the way the city of New York treats sound? As something secondary and uncontrolled, a vacant spectrum up for grabs according to the Hobbsian rule of "survival of the loudest"?

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Hey, if it's too loud, you're too old!!

Well, not really, but I just wanted to say that. I am also too old.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And "If it's the wrong film, you're the wrong person!", maybe?

[(Anonymous)]

New York is loud, but complaining about it is like saying water is too wet. What do you want from a super high density global hub of commerce?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, sure. It's just that we tend to think something like an art museum would be a place where the scale of values was reversed, at least while you were in there. But it isn't. (The Noguchi Museum, on the other hand -- I went there after PS1 and a trip to Roosevelt Island -- is a delight to the senses. The main sound in the yard is birds, the wind in the pines and water spilling from the fountains.)

I actually get the impression that PS1, having served its purpose as a stepping stone to get Klaus Biesenbach into MoMA, is now being run down. Even the water fountains weren't working on Sunday.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

I don't like PS1 very much, honestly, and some of the pieces I remember seeing have been shown in improper ways (either due to the curators or people who tampered with them). and you could've just taken the 7 train (the train rattling above you) to Jackson Heights for some good Indian food or a Bollywood movie.

Complaining that New York City is noisy is like complaining that people in Germany speak German. It's a tiny city that supports a region of 23 million people, and of those 23 million people almost 20% live their daily lives taking mass transportation (the really noisy stuff). Only Mexico City has a larger population area than that. Berlin is dramatically less dense - of course it's going to be quieter, it goes without saying.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

[smokebelch.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Don't know if you're aware of this project.

http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/res/davies/soundscapes/

It's a guy at Manchester Metropolitan University who's in charge of it and Peter Cusack from the London Musicians Collective is involved in some way. Aim appears to be to find a way of quantifying what "good" urban sound is and passing this on to planners.

Here's The Observer on it ..
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2174986,00.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it. You added noise in Photoshop! Arty!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Hm. I dunno about "arty" since it was done by a filter (Lens flare = instant credibility killer *COUGH*BFI (http://www.bfi.org.uk/)*COUGH*) but I like the idea of readers being frustrated by visual noise, straining to read about someone writing about the nuisance of audio noise. It makes it easier to empathise with the writer.

As Alanis Morissette would say "isnt it ironic?"

and the answer would be no. No, it's not.

Lack of Noise

[(Anonymous)]

Lack of noise can be disturbing too. I spent a week in the countryside not long ago, and I actually found it hard to sleep without the familiar sounds of the city.

I guess this really boils down to what you're used to rather than any absolute truth, but I do think the sound of humans around you is quite important to us all.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Add two more frames in an animation and you get a Click Opera entry glitter graphic!

Re: Lack of Noise

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I dont think it's the noise that bothers people so much as their lack of control over it.

I have a Sony Vaio laptop. It's *almost* as pretty as a Mac, but it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The fan is huge.

As I sit here moaning about the sound of fans and Momus grumbles about the sound of air conditioners, other people are buying both sounds on CD (http://www.purewhitenoise.com/) for $12.95:

[ofenheizung.livejournal.com]

I live in San Francisco and I find the same is true here, if at a lower level than New York. One problem is that the acoustics tend to be awful. Trendy bars and restaurants worry so much about having sleek modernist surfaces everywhere that the noise bounces around the room and you can barely hear yourself think.
Another weird thing here is the way that places leave their doors wide open even when it's cold outside. Not much Gemuetlichkeit around here. I always have to wear my jacket indoors.
Dr. O.

[merrow-sea.livejournal.com]

I spent last year living in NYC, thinking of moving back there after years away. Despite a rich experience, one of the (many) deciding factors for leaving was the constant, god-awful, senseless din. And it's not just about density. It's about bad policy, like allowing car alarms to be legal, and not enforcing anti-honking laws... Most of the people who live there appear to be desensitized to it, and passively go about their sad, noise-bombarded lives.
I just returned from 16 days on the Colorado River, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in AZ. I'm still struggling with re-entry to the everyday world. The noisiest element was the the crashing rapids (and our human presence). It was glorious. Not all luddite nature worship; many nights were spent in mini impromptu raves dancing under the canyon walls... someone had a decent sound system, everyone had ipods, there were laser light pens and headlamps with strobes and colored LEDs. And when the dancing was spent and we straggled off to our tents, perfect silence (and darkness) returned. These are extremes of experience. I couldn't live that primitively forever, but it reminds one of other, better, ways of being. I'm so glad I left NYC.

[(Anonymous)]

This piece had me thinking of the ambient DVD you wrote about some time ago. Yes, that one with the great fire! Make it public!

Re: Lack of Noise

[(Anonymous)]

and to be fair, nyc and even manhattan isn't all such a racket. i was sitting on my friend's stoop on east 74th street last evening, around sunset. it was eerily quiet, almost to the point of discomfort. i found it very sad that i was relieved when a passing siren or honking horn reminded me that i am in fact still where i expect to be.

Noguchi & Cage

[(Anonymous)]

Re: (The Noguchi Museum, on the other hand ... is a delight to the senses. The main sound in the yard is birds, the wind in the pines and water spilling from the fountains.)

Why didn't you mention this in the original note?

Contrasts are interesting, and while quiet is not advertised as part of the NYC experience, you can still find it.

Cage did have something to say on very loud sounds, like the subway, and accepting them as part of the environment. He also was able to get away from NY as well. He did a performance in the 80's with several of his pieces going on at once, with a boombox on his shoulder, walking in the performance space...

[(Anonymous)]

the dream house will clean your ears

http://www.melafoundation.org/main.htm

open thursdays and saturdays

[onthemoon.livejournal.com]

One of the major problems relating to noise in New York is highlighted by several of the comments up above where everyone seems so quick to say "It's New York, don't like it? Too bad!" I see this on an every day basis where so many people, including the mayor, seem completely content to write off serious quality of life issues as being an inevitable, un-fixable part of life in New York City. Undoubtedly there is a certain degree of sacrifice one must make when living in an over-populated environ, but there is no excuses the overwhelming lack of an effort on the city's part to curb unnecessary noise, especially when it is, technically speaking, breaking the law. Whether you're talking about noisey neighbors, booming car stereos, car alarms, or, what I find to be the biggest problem these days, horrendous construction going on at all hours (the DoB may be the city's biggest joke of all when it comes to enforcing illegal construction). Given a little effort and care on both the city and citizens part, a lot can be done about noise and it doesn't come at the cost of the 'character of the city.' I don't know about some folks, but not being able to sleep or think while pile drivers and my neighbors' ever so delightful music choices rock the walls and my brain certainly doesn't contribute to my 'genuine new york experience.'

Anony-mouses

[(Anonymous)]

Are non-bloggers gentler and kinder people because they don't contribute to the opinion-noise of the internet? Some of us don't like the macho rough and tumble of it all.

[wildbirdcall.livejournal.com]

There's a whole lot of merit to bringing up the issue of noise saturation. Some of it can't be altered in a place like New York, sure, but it seems then that the side-effect is so many folks being de-sensitized to their aural environment, and you get this unnecessary clutter of noise in environments where it could be more deliberate.
I was in Montana this summer, in Glacier Park, and one of their goals is to provide a really deliberate soundscape so that we understand what a place sounds like without the din of the constructed landscape.

City Sounds

[(Anonymous)]

Oooh.. forgot about the dream house! Yes, so lovely. Do make sure to check the website before each visit though, the times change during the year, depending on who/how many volunteers are available to monitor the space. (Young and Zazeela live according to a different day-length than most of the rest of us, and phase in and out of our common hours.)



I just returned from Brisbane, where I encountered an interesting temporary installation in their gorgeous Queensland State Library. Someone had taken recordings of various street sounds, and sent them to the bottoms of those large water bottles that sit upside down on office coolers. At the opening, on top, they had attached long purple tubes, (like giant bendy straws, those children's toys that you can whip around to make different sounds?). People would go up and listen through the tubes individually, very cute. I sat nearby waiting for a friend to come in from the deluge outside where there was a dancer and two sound artists playing in the rain, not moving. Gradually, oh so slowly, the sounds started to seep out of the tubes and into my ears. They had of course been there the whole time, but they were so delicate that I hadn't separated them out of my internal thoughts and memories. I heard a tiny honking, and a tiny beeping walk signal, and tiny people rushing about, as if I were a bird, high above, on a windless day. I did not see anyone else sit for so long, and am sure that even in the quiet library most people did not get to hear those distant city sounds in that way. It was like the opposite of everything. I liked that part most.




I regret that I still have not posted my pictures of that part of my trip.



Also in Brisbane, I took a boat down (up?) the river to the Lone Pine Koala reserve (not a fan of grumpy wooly narcotic addicts, I go there to pet the soft, sweet kangaroos and wallabies). We passed under a bridge, the end guardposts (what is the word?) of which they had converted into apartments. One family has lived there many, many years. The bridge rattles and shakes with the noise of the cars and the trucks and the wind. The guide said that the man who lives there now cannot sleep when he goes out into the country, he is so used to the racket.



Stuart Dempster here in Seattle can also provide you with a thorough and sound ear cleaning. (He would have liked that awful pun.)

[(Anonymous)]

Where were you born and raised? If you don't like it, leave - seriously. It's like moving to a Puerto Rican neighborhood and complaining that they're playing raggaeton too loud - what would happen if you walked out there and told those kind, dear sirs to turn off that racket?

People have done enough to make this city sanitized and boring - and now they want to take it further and get rid of the noise. There are plenty of places that are peaceful and quiet in New York City and the area. Just move there. Some people like it, some don't - if you're one of those who don't, fix your life and move.

[violet-hemlock.livejournal.com]

buuuuurn. nice scathing...loved it.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

YEAH!!!!!!!!