[01] Tae Hong Park: Sinescapes

Sinescapes is a composition that focuses on environmental sound as a metaphor to embrace the idea of “earth time” as opposed to human-centric time. One could say that the earth is “very old” and things change very slowly when compared to what happens during the course of human life. While the overarching trajectory of earth’s biological clock extends long periods of time, subtle, small changes simultaneously occur continuously, but are almost invisible to our senses. I try to capture some of these ideas in Sinescapes. The sounds themselves are based on single sinusoids where frequency, dynamics, and energy change is controlled at the micro and macro level via data captures from Citygram sensors. // Tae Hong Park

Composition is part of Citygram-Sound Project as a collaboration between NYU Steinhardt, NYU CUSP, and CalArts. The Citygram Project is a large-scale project that began in 2011. Citygram aims to deliver a real-time visualization/mapping system focusing on non-ocular energies through scale-accurate, non-intrusive, and data-driven interactive digital maps. The first iteration, Citygram One, focuses on exploring spatio-acoustic energies to reveal meaningful information including spatial loudness, traffic patterns, noise pollution, and emotion/mood through audio signal processing and machine learning techniques. Citygram aims to create a model for visualizing and applying computational techniques to produce metrics and further our knowledge of cities such as NYC and LA, while lately also the city of Prague has been included.