The International Soundboard of Tourism

PROJECT

The International Soundboard of Tourism

Adam is a coding teacher from Chicago often found biking the lakefront trail who enjoys a nice long stare at a Jackson Pollock painting.

Michael is a theatre-maker from Austin who loves running his dog around Town Lake and is fascinated by the highway noise barriers near his home.

Enrique is a creative technologist from Mexico City who enjoys walking randomly through the city and making experiments with code, interfaces and sound.

Christina is a sound artist from NYC who misses biking home at 5am after bouncing between clubs, ending on some glittery, sticky floor, crying with strangers to bootleg MC.

Yiru is a spatial and experience designer from Shanghai who loves walking and listening to sounds in the city and the river park near her home.

Po-Wen is a designer based in Shanghai who enjoys art and music making. Currently, he is experimenting with city sound signatures he collects in parks.

Dorian is a sound engineer from Ljubljana. If not in the studio, he enjoys being surrounded by nature, playing sports and cooking.

We are a collective of artists from around the world enrolled in NYU’s Global Low Residency program in Interactive Media Arts and, in this project, we are collaborating to learn to play music together in an online environment. We have been learning remotely since last summer as part of the inaugural cohort of the Low-Res IMA program, which is rooted in a maker culture of “learning by doing”, creative expression, and critical engagement. Essential to our time together has been developing our own individual artistic forms of expression, as well as sharing experiences grounded in our own local contexts and creative backgrounds.

For this project we are developing an innovative musical interface inspired by the spirit of our program. Each musician will build their own ‘instrument,’ gathering and representing distinctive features of their locales according to their personal style and orientation toward critical engagement. Through creative coding, data analysis, and both audio and visual design, all data captured from our cities will be transformed into unique digital outputs. These sonfications of our respective cities will be uploaded to an online musical interface, allowing us to perform, compose, and remix while learning to play and playing to learn...together.

Together, we represent four countries, six different cities, and seven artistic practices. We came together through our program and, due to circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not had the chance to meet in person. Consequently, we have sought ways to strengthen ties and build community remotely. The design of this musical interface emerged from such an attempt, as we saw an opportunity to explore cities we know very little about and would otherwise never experience through the eyes and ears of a local while deepening our connections to one another as we experiment and learn to perform as an ensemble. We hope that this project might serve as a model and inspiration for future international jam sessions.