Technology A — Pratt Grad ComD

Project Description

In a large city like New York, noise is an everyday condition. It is more than an inconvenience—it functions like an invisible map that reveals the city’s rhythm and density. When we examine the 311 noise-complaint dataset, we see traces of sound spreading across the city like a hidden web. Because these patterns do not surface in our daily experience, I wanted to make this invisible structure both visible and audible. For this work, I treated the complaint data as a kind of shared public voice and used it to generate synthetic sound. The horizontal and vertical lines visualize time-based noise patterns: each complaint becomes a coordinate placed according to the hour it was recorded. The vertical lines combine two layers of sound. The synthesized audio derived from the dataset shapes their color and movement, while real-time input—such as the audience’s voices or the ambient noise in the space—modifies them in the same way. Each line thus becomes a meeting point between the city’s past sounds and the sounds of the present moment. As these layers overlap on the screen, the work shifts from a passive observation of urban noise to an awareness that we are continuously contributing to, and reshaping, the city’s sonic environment.

Credits

Gemini, Antigravity

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The Rhythm of Noise by Seulgi Choei

Noise Map

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by Seulgi Choei

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by Seulgi Choei

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