Jack In
This project proposes a series of installations built into the environment throughout urban space that interface with the listener via a conventional 1/4″ headphone jack (similar to Carsten Stabenow’s public listening projects). Headphones are a common and widely available aural extension well suited to point attention towards acoustic details and cognitive dissonances in urban space that are otherwise suppressed. For example, when standing in front of one of the many ineffective but quaintly overgrown with ivy noise walls, one may ‘jack in’ to hear an alternate universe, a phonotopia, where traffic really is screened out and where other sounds, perhaps those of nature, dominate. Alternatively, one may hear urban sounds from other locales thousands of miles away, something that may well be happening in near-real time depending on the technology / funding available for the installation. This project touches on several overarching questions of our age: (sound)ecology, globalization, and post-humanism.
Part of The City as a Studio proposal for a long-term A/V installation that enacts environmental surveillance and offers an ambulent public exhibition platform. Immediate engagement with the public can be established through a mobile app, intended as much to mobilize interest as to collect ethnographic data. For a related conversation, refer to CBC’s Spark ep. 295 on street psychology.
