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"Fuzzy Logic is a speculative project that responds to noise pollution with music composition. Traffic noise is now the inorganic combination of individually designed sounds. A recent European law states that new models of electric and hybrid vehicles will have to make a noise by 2019: a great design opportunity! Exploiting the potential of current shifts towards electric transport, the project presents an alternative: noise itself becomes the object of design, and traffic is turned into a musical experience. Future e-cars are approached as speakers on wheels and rather than design the sound of single vehicles, we can compose the sound of traffic as a whole. Indian traffic epitomizes the future of noise, in increasingly overpopulated urban ares across Asia and Africa. The focus is on the iconic indian tuktuk. Each one plays an instrument as part of a system designed to be randomly harmonic and make musical sense as a whole - regardless individual tuktuks driving patterns. Traffic becomes a jam session, a kind of moving orchestra."

"A red-white-and-blue sign at the corner of West Broadway and Watts Street in SoHo reads, "Don't Honk - $350 Penalty." It is, shall we say, not always heeded. This corner is a five-way crossing, where Broome Street forks into Watts, which leads to the Holland Tunnel, and crosses West Broadway, which has two-way traffic. The tunnel entrances themselves run smoothly, if slowly; traffic police officers are there. But the New Jersey exodus has to back up somewhere, and this corner is one of those places. Amid this gridlock is a whole lot of self-expression via car horns and the occasional, ah, verbal admonition. "

Like the landscape, each city has a unique soundscape. In addition to the typical sounds of traffic and people, San Francisco has some identifiably unique sounds like cable cars, fog horns, trolleys and on occasion, the Blue Angels performing overhead. Almost all of us delight in these sounds because they help define the sense of place. They heighten our everyday experience. Sounds are an integral part of our experience, as you know if you've ever been to a carnival, sporting event or marketplace. And recalling sounds often brings back vivid visual memories of a place or time.

"I gave a talk on my Masters Thesis Project in Architecture focusing on Altering Soundscapes in Exterior Environments using Helmholtz Resonators in Ceramic Bricks to absorb Low Frequency Traffic Noise."

"The music on Quartz Locked, Deep City Wandering, was sourced from non-musical, professional electronic appliances recorded back in 1987 and preserved on a C-90 cassette until this day. The original sounds were mainly derived from two electronic devices: a hacked, roadside traffic signal data logger, on the one hand, and a physician's pager, on the other. Wires were soldered to various parts of the data logger's motherboard and connected to a tape recorder's audio inputs, emitting a rich assortment of glitch sounds, static noises and buzzing a-plenty. A physician's pager, smuggled from the local hospital, was similarly hacked and manipulated in order to produce high frequency buzzing noises with striking modulation/demodulation effects. Both devices were eventually plugged together to create additional random interference patterns, while occasional tape manipulation and varispeed effect were also applied during the recording process."

"since 2006, when scientists at Denali began a decade-long effort to collect a month's worth of acoustic data from more than 60 sites across the park - including a 14,000-foot-high spot on Mount McKinley - Betchkal and his colleagues have recorded only 36 complete days in which the sounds of an internal combustion engine of some sort were absent. Planes are the most common source. Once, in the course of 24 hours, a single recording station captured the buzzing of 78 low-altitude props - the kind used for sightseeing tours; other areas have logged daily averages as high as one sky- or street-traffic sound every 17 minutes."

The idea for Sonic Bicycle Ride combines Beijing's bicycles - still very evident despite the traffic - with the sampling loudhailers used by street vendors to advertise their wares. These inexpensive devices record eight-second slogans, which playback repeatedly, and loudly, until the batteries go flat. For Sonic Bicycle Ride, eight loudhailers were attached to eight bicycles and used to play specially created sounds as they were cycled around Beijing's streets. Routes were planned through the Xicheng district - an older hutong area crossed by a few busy roads - so that the bikes would be heard in changing combinations, sometimes as one large group, sometimes on their own. The eight layers of sound were designed to be heard separately or to harmonise when brought together. Listeners could follow on their own bikes or stay in one place. Bystanders heard the piece emerging in and out of familiar neighbourhood sounds. "

"Some questions we aim to address are; How can we analyze and address the increasingly homogenized sounds of urban environments from traffic and other forms of urban "noise"? How can we creatively respond to the effect of urban noise on the loss of character or identity of a place? What are desirable sound environments? How can we establish new codes or behaviors that help shape our sound environments? How can we adapt or modify existing the architectural to develop new acoustic spaces? How can we identify unique or characteristic social patterns that help shape the sonic identity of a place? What role does technology play in this process, specifically newly available and more affordable digital recording technologies? "

""we tend to be indifferent to acoustics" in contemporary residences, and think only of "competing with traffic outside". Normally, he continues, "architecture is about being quiet", whereas there's a rich history of sound and architecture - especially in pre-literate societies. He talks of the clarity of sound in the Greek amphitheatre, of the intentional use of sound spaces in Medieval and Gothic cathedrals, which were "designed by acoustics as much as visual principles - they were considered 'sacred resonators'"."

"In the MASS MoCA portion of this multi-part project, Harmonic Bridge, low sounds roll and drone under the Route 2 overpass half a block from MASS MoCA. Entering the space under the bridge, one becomes aware of a turning eddy of sound in the midst of intersecting streams of traffic. Cars pass by heading north or south on Marshall Street and east or west on the Route 2 bridge, but this linear motion is counterpoised by a rolling, humming C as calming as the rhythm of ocean waves. Although cars stream by, pedestrians lose the impetus to move forward, derailed by this cool pool of sound with its mysterious, chant-like hum. Harmonic Bridge presents an aural cross-section of North Adams, a slice of the city in the key of C, comprised of the fundamental note and its overtone series."

In November, Gillis and his label, Illegal Art, released the fifth Girl Talk album, "All Day," as a free download. Within 24 hours, several sites had posted annotations of "All Day," cataloging the samples on the album -there are 373 of them. Download traffic was so heavy that MTV News ran the headline "Girl Talk Apologizes for Breaking the Internet" - hyperbole, but not far from the truth. Illegal-art.net reports that "All Day" was downloaded so often that the servers crashed. In Girl Talk's honor, Pittsburgh declared Dec. 7, 2010, "Gregg Gillis Day."

"Experiment let the primates choose what they wanted to hear, with rumbling vehicles thought to mimic elements of their own communications"

"The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people's perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in an urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020."

"Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that recycles noise from the environment. It does not make any sound of its own, but rather it attempts to draw our attention to the sounds already present by framing them in a new way. Named after the organ of hearing in the inner ear, it uses the acoustic technology of sonic crystals to accentuate and attenuate frequencies within the broad range of sound present in road traffic or falling water. By recycling surplus sounds from our environment, we hope to challenge expectations of what might constitute a piece of music by adding nothing to the existing soundscape but rather offering new ways of listening to what is already there. This instrument is a device that, for us, rematerializes our experience of sound, inviting us to "listen to ourselves listen"."

"While the vitality and stimulation of the urban environment can be pleasant, those living in or visiting densely populated areas such as New York can have wildly different experiences. The ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; the struggle for mental and physical space; and the anxious need for constant communication in person or via technology are relentless assaults on the senses. One wonders how locals and visitors can escape, find respite, and make peace with their space in this "city that never sleeps.""