Platforms/Formats
Five cities in one week. No wonder I’m exhausted. I helped run a workshop on the Civic Imagination as a part of the Civic Paths research group. We traveled to Stevens Point, Wisconsin. The weather forecast said the temperature would range from -16ºF to 10ºF. During the time I was packing my layers for an unpredictable event, I came across Aytipical (2017). When we landed in the MidWest, a dialogue from the first episode of the first season simply resonated.
I think, if it were really, really cold, like Antarctica cold, the coldness would feel like a sound. The cold would be so intense that you could hear it. I would like to hear that sound.
– Atypical (2017) S01E01
A central element of the workshop was community-building during a morning stroll, the streets were deserted. Nobody seemed to be walking, or at least that’s what I thought. As I approached the town square, I started to hear music. This was the place of gathering, where the grass was taken over by an ice rink. A girl was learning to ice skate by pushing a metal stool. Folding tables, coffee mugs, people talking and dogs barking over them. The empty streets came alive in that square. As I walked away, all was quiet once more.
O’hare was loud and uneventful. The light installations masked whatever sounds were recognized in the background. You can try it by playing the track at the time you watch the video above.
My —self-adapted — noise un canceling earbuds had worked wonders in different settings. I fount that silicone covers on the earpieces were a nice noise isolator. They give me some sort of comfort, and for two main reasons: they do their intended job, where they prevent the earpiece to fall out; and they add a layer of physical distance between the inner and outer world. However, just as Sterne’s chapter con compression and the domestication of noise, I thought I had it handled, that I cracked the code and the need to look into actual noise-canceling devices —or masking devices (?). I was wrong. During my flight back from Portage County, Wisconsin, I sat next to a 3/4-year old. Roughly —I’m terrible with guessing ages. Even after my failed attempt to play a stored white noise playlist, I put on my earbuds, hoping I’d be able to read uninterruptedly. Just as I get easily visually distracted, the same scenario happens with the sonic environment. The young girl was talkative —to her mother, to her pink pet dinosaur, to herself. It wasn’t until she fell asleep that I was able to focus. I still felt this material barrier was helping me filter the airplane hum into a quiet void. Sooner, rather than later, she woke up, even more talkative than before –not quieter, but with fewer variations in their tone. After my third attempt at reading the last page of the chapter –successfully, I might add — I closed my book and removed my earbuds, only to realize that the airplane’s hum masked the child’s loud attention-seeking remarks better that the items in my ears.
My week ended in Tijuana, México. The sonic differences between San Diego and Tijuana astound me –alongside the open windows South of the border.
Visual and sonic go together, as even from the car you can have these unexpected encounters throughout Zona Río on any given day in Tijuana.
