We do not as a society pay attention to ambient sounds. We are much more focused on the visual over the auditory. My goal is to articulate an idea that New York City becomes an instrument and a sonic geographical browser by mapping the hidden ambient sounds of the city in order to indicate the significance of our soundscape in everyday life. I chose New York City for its unique architectural nature to use the city's space as a potential sonic platform which clearly frames the design of the project's interface. We tend to ignore what we hear in our typical life because we have learned not to acknowledge them. Therefore, the sampled sounds from the city are a series of low frequency sounds that we do not normally perceive, so that by experiencing the interface the users are able to actively involved with an unusual sonorous interaction.

As I described my interest toward the sounds that are difficult for us to notice, the project presents diverse infrasonic sounds recorded from the distinct locations in the city. Each of these sources is a specific architectural urban object. Skyscrapers such as the World Trade Center Buildings are vibrated like a tuning folk because of the wind. Similarly, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge both generate sounds like a string instrument because of the vibration of the suspension cables, caused by the traffic movements and the wind. Also, I sampled a number of low frequency sounds such as footsteps transmitted through the marble floor of the Grand Central Station, water lapping against a wooden pier along Hudson River, and a vibration inside the deck of the Staten Island Ferry.

Since my project is focused on the hidden sounds and the urban space, the interface is designed by using radar as a motif because it is a system detecting and visualizing things that are difficult to be noticed in space. The project maps the city with the ambient sounds through the radarscope. The users navigate in the interface by dragging the viewer located on a map of New York City in the interface. The location of the users and the radar arm which sweeps in the scope dynamically determine the volume and the pan of the sounds produced from each of the sound objects.

The radar manner is considered as an active score that translates a traditional horizontal music score into a new form of music score as well as the sound objects as music notations in order to enhance the idea of instrument. To give the users more freedom, the users can toggle each of the sound objects to create their own sets of the composition. The interface can be also used as a tool which browses the space and gives the users an opportunity to hear the auditory information and view the geographical and the background information of the sounds. Influenced by John Cage, who raised an idea of new type of music composed of noise, and Tom Johnson, who writes about a notion of documentary music, the project gives the users opportunities to perform and browse the urban soundscape.

Most of us are not often conscious of the soundscape and do not even know what is heard. The project targets an interaction between the urban soundscape and the users. It serves as an instrument taking advantage of a radar manner, whose play-head communicates with the sounds, and a browser managing the information, whose radar system sweeps the infrasonic soundscpe. I assume that the users are actively able to commit to the interactive experience and be given a chance to pay more attention to our soundscape as a contribution of this project to the society. Moreover, I want to appeal to the people how precious and rare an experience living in the soundscape is.