City Sounds @ City Lab

WPI has initiated a series of projects intended to document sounds that characterize cities from around the world. The first such project entitled “The Sounds of Venice” was completed in the summer of 2003 and it encompassed the identification, recording and documentation of over 150 indigenous Venetian sounds. The goal is to make available the sounds to interested scholars, artists and sound professionals and to invite musicians to create original compositions that will incorporate these sounds into original scores. The overall aim is to eventually collect and disseminate sounds from all of the cities where WPI operates project centers.

This multi-year interdisciplinary initiative will provide many opportunities for WPI students to complete their Sufficiencies, IQPs, MQPs, as well as ISPs both on and off campus.

City Sounds Projects

Several IQPs, MQPs and Sufficiencies will be dedicated to furthering the overarching project. Specific target locales will also be addressed on a case-by-case basis with specific on- or off-campus projects.

Sounds of Venice

This was the first site-specific application of the overarching concept. The pioneering project in Venice took place in the summer of 2003. Two sufficiencies have followed. Connected to this initiative is the concurrent work on the sonification of tides in Venice by Marty Quinn.

Sounds of WPI

After Venice, the next place to be specifically targeted is WPI itself (B04-C05).

Sounds of Boston

In term D05 a team at the Boston Project Center will capture the Sounds of Boston and will help further some of the overarching aims of the initiative. There may be a collaboration with Emerson College to document the process in a video.

Sounds of Worcester

As part of the preparatory practice sessions of any project, we will continue to accumulate sounds of Worcester. Eventually a specific Sounds of Worcester project may be carried out through the Worcester Community Project Center at WPI.

Global Perspectives on Sounds

Eventually, we plan to conduct our city sounds projects at all of the project centers that are part of the WPI Global Perspectives Program, so we will probably have “The Sounds of Bangkok”, “The Sounds pf Copenhagen”, “The Sounds of Melbourne” and many others.

Emergent Sounds

W are exploring ways to elicit submissions of sound samples (MP3) as potential candidates for inclusion in the “Sounds of” collection for a particular town. A self-regulating system of feedback will make the more characteristic sounds emerge from all the submissions. Models are ”yellow arrow” and other self-organizing street information systems.