'Hear the city as a symphony'
An interactive exhibit tunes in the sounds of Tufts community
MEDFORD - It could be an oracle: A glowing dial with a lens in the middle blinks with images. It hums in the key of E inside a blue-domed gazebo, which sits atop a temple of learning: Tisch Library, high on the hill that Tufts University occupies here.
This is "Harmony in the Age of Noise," an interactive sound-art installation designed by Bruce Odland. It may not tell you the future, but it will certainly tune you into the present, as you dial through the sounds of Medford.
"It's beautiful when you start to hear the city as a symphony," says Odland, a New York-based sound artist and composer who has worked all over the world, integrating environmental sounds into something like music. "You begin to hear the rhythms of the economy, like the roar of rush hour. You're listening with a different part of your brain - the music part of your brain, not the noise part of your brain."
The installation is a novel idea for many people, says Tufts provost Jamshed Bharucha, whose office helped underwrite the project. "It's different than the typical conception of music. We usually think of public art in visual terms," he says. "This enables people to think about it through auditory senses. It serves the same goals as visual public art, but it stretches those boundaries."
For "Harmony in the Age of Noise," Odland worked with David Guss, a Tufts anthropology professor, and students in Guss's Architecture of Utopia class, which focuses on the buildings at local colleges and universities.
"I wanted to look at sense of place, with an emphasis on sense," explains Guss, bearded and casual in his office on the edge of campus. "We have a deep synesthetic attachment to place, and it's not just visual. Sound is the most deeply emotional [sense] experience we have."
Guss and Odland sent the students out to record "sound maps" of the university and its neighborhood. More than 80 of these recordings can be found on Odland's glowing sound dial, from the splash of water at a swim meet to the fluid harmony of a group of a cappella singers to the low-throated growl of a subway taking off from Davis Square.
The open-air structure of the gazebo is an invitation to passersby. Under the dome, anyone can spin the dial and make an original mix of sounds, and with each turn, the direction the dial faces in the landscape calls up sound culled from that location. Video that accompanies each recording appears in the small lens in the middle. There's room for six people around the dial, and the more hands on its frosted glass surface, the brighter it glows.
"Ordinarily you walk, and you have a slow transition from one acoustical environment to another, or you're in a car and you're tuned out," says Odland, gazing intently from under sharply angled eyebrows and a thatch of thick graying hair. "Here you can jump-cut from space to space, and see how that feels."
Guss and Odland made some recordings on their own, including one at Sacco's Bowl Haven, an institution in Davis Square since the late 1930s.
"In that sense, it's also a sound capsule, like a time capsule," says Guss. "What the world sounds like in the spring of 2008."
Odland met with the class and led them in some "ear yoga," he says, heightening their hearing. Dan Schissler, a junior, enjoyed the exercise.
"We're in the age of sight right now. Excess sound clogs our ears," says Schissler. He was on hand to help hoist sculptor Mark McNamara's parabolic gazebo up on the library roof on a recent sunny day, along with several strapping athletes Guss had recruited from a fraternity across the street from his office.
"I'm an architectural studies major," Schissler says, squinting at the blue dome against the cloudless blue sky. "The aesthetic is the best part for me. Especially the merging of sound and sight. I've never worked with a sculptor or a sound artist. It's eye-opening for a growing artist."
Guss worked with a host of neighbors as well as several departments at Tufts to get "Harmony in the Age of Noise" up and running. One of the aims of the piece, says Bharucha, is to engage the community. Certainly, the installation reaches into the streets of Medford.
When nobody is spinning the dial to play the sound maps, the piece emits a rumbling hum. It's a live feed from a 14-foot tube that Odland has mounted over Boston Avenue at the intersection with College Avenue, transmitted from a cluster of speakers hanging under the dome. The tube gathers all the sounds from that busy corner and tunes them to E.
"Well, really it hovers between E and E-flat," notes Odland. "On cold days, it's closer to E-flat. Several composers believe that the key of the earth is E-flat. I agree with Mahler and Brahms on that."
The musical groan, like that of a giant didgeridoo, intensifies as trucks pass through the intersection. If you're standing in the gazebo listening, it resonates down to the soles of your feet. Birdsong and snatches of conversation ornament the eerie tones.
"Harmony in the Age of Noise" has a third sonic component. Anyone can upload a 30-second sound clip to play on the hour.
"You might decide you want to come up here on Wednesday at 4," says Guss. "You can load it to play the moment you get here."
For Odland, any uploaded sounds add another line of harmony to the symphony.
"We make sounds as a culture, and we treat them as if they're meaningless. What if they do mean something?" Odland asks, furrowing his brow. "Let's imagine that in examining them, they reveal something about our culture."
Imagine. Or just listen.
