Our project is a minute and six-second audio track that we assembled from various sounds that we recorded in our day-to-day lives in New York City. The topic was assigned to us by Professor Margarit Ordukhanyan, but once we had the topic assigned, it was pretty much up to us to find the sounds that we think define the “Sounds of New York City.” It took us some time to figure out how to balance many of the city’s universal sounds, like the trains and traffic, with a more personal experience related to our individual lives. Through that process and discussion, we concluded that we could add a personal aspect to the project by including sounds of the respective languages we speak at home, including the announcements of our specific train stops and more personal sounds that are not typically associated with NYC at all but relate to our individual experience, like the sound of an Xbox or a Whatsapp call. Once we had figured it out, we just had to go out and record; we spent a couple of days just recording sounds during our respective commutes and in our neighborhoods and homes. Once we had compiled all the sounds we wanted to use, we decided which sounds made the cut and would work the best when assembled into an audio track. We finally used an audio editing software to create an audio track that balances the overlapping sounds of our city while still making every individual sound audible to the listener.
Authors: Gabriel Marinescu, Marcin Zarkowski
