[03] Evan Kent: Antrophony

Evan Kent has been interested in speech and soundscapes as separate entities for a while now, and through Anthrophony I, he explores speech as perhaps the purest extraction from the human soundscape. The texts, which thematically deal with sound, are driven by feature data from the recorded soundscapes of both New York and Prague, expressing the speech-scape quite literally. Navigating the space between documentary and composition has been important for Evan lately, especially with recorded media. The speech-scapes allowed him to work with language in a purely syntactic way, as one might hear in instrumental or acousmatic music, but also brought to his attention a sort of semantic Hauptstimme in the texture, in which the meaning of the words, however abstracted, became relevant again.

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.