Reinterpreting Soundscape: Astor Place is a series of work created through study and observation of soundscape in Astor Place, New York. It re-imagines the soundscape of a location at a specific time of a day as a hand created visual representation, a music composition and finally, as a audio visual experience showcased in the above video.
PROJECT TYPE: Solo Project
LIVE PROJECT LINK: website
TECHNICAL DETAILS: Soundscape was recorded and the data analyzed was anotated in csv format, which was used to create the sound track and to drive the live visualizations created with p5.js
Starting with a 10 minute recording of soundscape on February 8th, from 2:49pm - 2:50pm at Astor Place, New York, the soundscape was studied and analyzed by isolating various sound sources in the recording, with annotations of the occurrences of identified sound sources.
The annotation of the sound sources were represented in two ways: in visual and audio form. The visual representation of the soundscape was created in paper cuts and colored charcoal pencil drawings.
The visual representation above was used as a music notation to be transformed as a music piece. The drawing was divided equally as below, each section representing a bar of music.
The music piece was then used to create matching and audio driven visuals in p5.js and its sound library. Video of the end result is shown at the top of the page.