Noise Study

Noise Study (2022) is a 5-minute, 12-channel interactive noise piece exploring the use of three different artificial noises. It was selected and will be performed at the 2023 New York Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF) and also featured and premiered at Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute (BIAI). This piece questions how the mechanical noise, of our times, can reconnect with nature. To do this, various parameters of White, Pink, and Fractal noise were adjusted to re-create natural sounds. Natural sounds such as humming wind, earthquake, burning, and chemical reactions were recreated using sampling, DSP techniques, and the music software language Csound. The piece is an attempt to find beauty in the coexistence of machines and nature, the noise mixed into everyday life. 

 

The audience breaks down the boundaries between mechanical and natural sounds, and through a new experience of noise that has become routine in urban life, forming a new relationship with the daily background sound of noise. 

 

Audiences wear custom black eye masks that alter sensory experiences. This changes participants’ spatial imagination by creating an incomplete form of visual experience. With their eyes closed, the audience senses light from live performers.  Audiences are presented with a range of tactile experiences provoked by wind, particles, etc., and sound. This brings to mind new perceptions of ignored or over-emphasized noise, thoughts of destroyed nature and the space of a city created by humans, and blurred boundaries between civilization and nature.