this sound map draws inspiration from the urban mediatation text score created by pauline oliveiros and aims to develop a protocol for engaged listening in an area of polluted sound.
what does relative silence sound like in such a space, and what steps are necessary take to hear it?
a text score for listening in maspeth:
Listen to a roadway - eyes closed - distinguish size shape make of car by the sound - also speed and health of engine.
consider their origin and terminus.
when they are gone, listen for their echoes in your environment.
this project uses tones drawn from the estey field organ tone archive as an underlying texture within each field recordings. the estey tones are automated to distort when recordings peak over a threshold speculatively determined to be the "noise floor" of each location.
originally, these pedal organs were used for field missions, schools, small chapels, military programs, and home use. the archive describes the its collection of sustained notes as historic means through which people have connected with the sound waves of their environments. "resolution," the archive writes, "comes through the listener's own mind sorting out the wave patterns."
each recording compiles three distinct days of records: the afternoon of sunday october 4, the evening of saturday october 10, and the morning of wednesday october 14. to listen to this piece as a continuous sounscape reference the soundcloud link at the bottom of this page.
What can you hear when it's quiet here? Birds in the trees. The Long Island expressway. The breeze in the leaves. on sunday morning it was calm. only a few cars cruised past, although many many planes passed overhead, probably headed to Laguardia. Maspeth is wide and flat, without that many tall buildings. The planes effect a breeze on the ground that you feel before you hear them. At night it was a little busier. theres a big pothole a few feet away from the bus stop that cars and bikes bounce over. On wednesday morning I got to hear voices here, real human voices. There is quite a bit of traffic on weekday mornings. things get started early in maspeth. Across the street, past the revel charging station, something is emitting bangs and beeps. Birds overhead again. Some heavier traffic starts to pick up. this is an exit/entrance point, maybe a little more exit than entrance. The monument in the middle of the park is to the heroes of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. That's a lot of wars, not all of them, but it might as well be. I suspect the presence of a memorial is what techinically makes it a park. the monument was erected by the people of laurel hill, a neighborhood that seems to have once stretched out from here to where the cemetery ends today. today it is little more than "a triangle of dirt," to borrow the words of a google review.
There's a lot of background noise here. There's also a lot of noise in general. it rips through and across your attention, moving from here to there. my nerves get a little frayed here. There are two auto repair shops, an abandoned diner, and off on the horizon the big parking structure that all the amazon vans crawl back into at night. Heavy freight passes by frequently, along with tons of commuter cars and the odd bicycle. That mix of machinery is something that defines this area. It also leaks out into all the surrounding streets and neighborhoods. the freight traffic of the outer boroughs comes and goes from the IBZ, and this is one of the main streets that flows back into it from the Long Island expressway. From this spot you get to see a lot of the traffic thats entering Maspeth. The air here is heavy. apparently the patch of bricks i'm standing on used to be a mansion. or according to the historic marker, some 200 feet away, there used to be a mansion. the guy who lived there designed the erie canal. parts of his design were inspired by newtown creek just over there. I wonder when the last time Maspeth could accommodate a mansion was. the house changed hands several times over the following century or so and ultimately became a party mansion with a chandelier that weighed two tons. then it burned down. now, this too is little more than a triangle of bricks and dirt, another strange monument to what was once here. today the best we get is a massive ant colony living under the bricks. dozens and dozens of ant hills pop up everywhere. i scattered some gummy bears around the bricks as a thank you on my last visit.
This is one of the most evil fucked up intersections i ever bike through. every time i come up on it i brace myself and perpare to go over my handlebars from a pothole or have my tire shredded by a piece of glass or get cut off by an eighteen wheeler. two of the stop signs are partially obscured, which means traffic basically operates on instinct. down this road is the department of sanitation garage and a bunch of grocery distributors, up this road is the ups and fedex warehouse. This is the center of it all. Right on the mouth one of an thoroughfare leading to the heart of the IBZ, through which you can also cut straight from Queens to Brooklyn. It's a bit of a wasteland, covered with signs of wear from relentless heavy freight. You can hear the bigger trucks slow down to cross the railroad tracks, so they dont bottom out and mess up their trucks. You can hear cars that rip through perpendicular to the railroad tracks without stopping, clattering over the loose manhole in the road. In the few weeks I was around, a power line began to sag feet down to the ground. when a bike is unlucky enough to pass through this intersection everything on it rattles like its about to crumble in an instant. it feels that way when you ride over it, too. The noise is relentless. Wave after wave, morning day night.
it doesn't look like much but this is about as good as it gets in this area. there's a nice breeze here. A cricket is chirping away in a bush somewhere to my left. I can hear the breeze in the wildflower bushes. planes passing overhead are extra loud here. On a Saturday night, I catch little snippets of music from a club down the water a ways. floodlights illuminate a concrete recycling plant across the water where fish are feeding on the dusk bugs. one day i notice that there is a packet of fishing lures discarded behind the bench. Right nextdoor me is a DSNY garage. Things get significantly louder when it is active, and on wednesday morning there's a ton of activity. Trucks either coming or going. across the water a couple dozen cement mixer line the riverbank, blocking out my view of whatever is making all the racket on their plant. I can hear it, though. They're all marked with the "Empire" logo, which seems to be a concrete mixing company. I look them up and now im on their instagram while their plant blares across the water. a recent caption reads "Generations deep. No shortcuts. That's legacy." In the early 2000s they got fined $300k for dumping concrete waste in the water. plank road used to be a whole road, not just these couple of remnants of wood. in the 1800s it connected two of the early neighborhoods in the area. it got demolished to build the first version of the bridge over on grand street in 1875, which promptly collapsed into the creek. way before that Lenape people foraged shellfish here. Now it's just nice that there are crickets and fish and a good bench to sit on.
We're under the bridge now. It's quiet on sunday morning, breezy and isolated. Mostly you hear the resonance of the bridge overhead. On saturday night the resonance gets louder. This time im right on the water, sitting on a retaining wall behind a fence. A few people have left their marks here. wednesday morning the bridge noise is complemented by a whine from the concrete plant across the water. i had hoped to be able to hear the skate park from here, which tend to produce some interesting echoes off the underside of the bridge. the concrete plant is a wall of sound between us, though, that same perpetual drone that is all over the creek area. It appears this is another concrete supplier, "Prime Mix." "prime mix" has a meager 2.7 stars on google reviews. Two years ago Andre M. wrote "Be careful working with these people, their drivers go around hitting peoples vehicles and then threatening them and fleeing the scene." That sounds about right. The following reviews are all from eight years ago. Christopher P. wrote "This company does not respect NYC area standards by under paying and exploiting their workers." "Undermines the wages of the skilled trades in NYC." Mike P. "Unfair labor practices," Thomas L. "Terrible company," Sean R. "Absolutely Horrible," Eddie G. "This company is horrible. Exploits their workers!" Chris C. This next on is from David W., ten years ago: "Brooklyn Ready Mix Concrete was found in civil contempt by a federal magistrate judge in 2016 for dumping polluted, cement-laden water into Newtorn Creek." A quick google proves this to be true. They got caught on camera running a hose over that wall you can see in the picture directly into the creek and got fined approximately $250,000.
Addtional listening
Einojuhani Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus (1972)
Alternative interpretation of Urban Meditation
Oral history interview with Newtown Creek Alliance (NCA) members
Additional reading:
Ethical field recording & 'Decolonial' practice: In conversation with Budhaditya Chattopadhyay.
Anthology of Text Scores, Pauline Oliveiros
The Estey Organ Virtual Musuem
NYC COASTLINES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Map of part of the Laurel Hill tracte
History of the DeWitt Clinton House
The History and Geography of Newtown Creek
Maspeth Avenue, Plank Road
Concrete Company (Empire Transit Mix, Inc.) Pleads Guilty to Fouling Newtown Creek Half of Penalty to Fund Restoration Work
Riverkeeper, Inc. v. Brooklyn Ready Mix Concrete