Visitor Response

reviewers response to HIVE MUSIC in NYC , a performance/installation at the Kitchen in 1997
Wall st. Journal "reduces the city's noize to a benign buzz"


Responses to "POOL" Berlin 2001, were left in a visitor book, unsolicited
POOL was a harmonic geometric version of Potsdammer Platz, Berlin in an indoor space which included a vibrating ramp visitors could lie down on.] translated from german

"Rebirthing in 60 minutes" DRS
"An Acoustic Oasis" Jutta
"more rooms like this will keep people happy" Jimme
"quite simple but excellant result"
"happy sould, am i part of this creation in normal life?"
"good for me to sit and vibrate, ripples and waves", nganga
"a drone of stone to hone my bone
audio ergo om
oh profound sound underground bound to
be wound round
etc, etc."
"very relaxing, a massage for your soul" Karen
"I would like this sound to be around me when I wanted them to be there!
have the possibility to be able to turn this effect on when I feel like it"
tatiana
"Just great and stimulating, both for the mind and body and for creative ideas"
Ivan
"very pleasant indeed and nice on a monday afternoon" j.


Responses to BOX 30/70
BOX [comments left in our book during its 2001 tour]

Very pleasant. I have felt very salvaged, Konrad Ma
"Does Dresden sound different than Rotterdam? And how does Dresden sound at all? A question, indeed. Do we ever have perceived our daily acoustic environment in different way than what it is? Almost only noise, often fuss"


BOX interviews, Linz 2002 [ from a series of video interviews with visitors as they left the BOX container where they were sheltered from the raw traffic, and listened to the harmonic version, and then went to stand next to the "cube" loudspeaker where you could hear a mix or raw and harmonic reality.] bruce odland was asking questions, following is a transcript.
interview of guy with nice shades
ns-the traffic noise i would say without any manipulation is as anywhere else in the world would more feel like a hassle, its disrupting it creates more of a negative feeling, whereas when you hear it with your sound processing with the overtones it makes the whole thing more harmonic , new depth to the, even to the traffic noise, even when you stand here(by the cube) and hear it coming out from here, thats the interesting thing, not just in the [box] itself but even here you hear the background noise very loudly here, it sounds harmonic.
bo- what is the emotional quality of that for you?
- i feel relaxed naturally, the stress is [aleviated]
his girlfriend,also nice shades
bo- whats your impression of what you've heard here?
ans- i think its really amazing because traffic is a stress factor, and it [the harmonically treated sounds coming from the "cube"] gets completely ...the other thing....its getting meditation and i like it, i imagine a zen monastery or something like this. its really changing the world, i like it. its a good thing, you should put them everywhere.
ns- you should put them on public spaces permanently
ans- you should putsomething in your ear and as you walk through the city you hear just this sound, would it be possible?
b0- would you like to be a tester?
ns-yes.
nsa- yes
[they go off to leave their email addresses in the BOX]
b0- [moving away from the cube, near to raw traffic] how do you feel about the raw traffic sound?
ns- i miss them [the overtones]
b0- can you still hear them in your head?
ans- i still have them in here [rubs her belly]
bo- there are some theories of chakric music that you have certain overtones in your body, maybe yours are still installed.
BOX- Linz, Sept 02.
interview with "massine campion"
mc-the piece a very beautiful green box, and inside the green box what i thought was reality changed and gave me a different view of what i experience, interesting experience..... bo-compare raw traffic to transformed..
mc-....in a way you dont think of comparing those two, when i look at the raw traffic i dont think of it as the same source that provides the same kind of sound(transformed), yeah, its two different worlds....
bo- how does the traffic make you feel, and how does the transformed make you feel
mc-naturally this sound is much more nicer____ but the disturbing thing is that i dont pay attention to the traffic only when im thinking about it, reflecting about it after...
bo- so you think that this transformed sound changes your relationship with the traffic? definately
bo-in what kind of way?
mc- i dont know actually, i dont think i can explain it.
interview with peter felder, musician..
bo-what is your impression of this experience?
pf-when you sit inside the box it calmingly becomes the sound of the traffic.... becomes like waves, it rises and falls, it becomes relaxing
bo - now when you're standing and hearing both the traffic and the transformed sound, how do you describe that?
pf- it someway in between because you still hear the transformed sound and the abrubptness of the gear shifting ....but it makes it a little more like music, its more of a ____difference when youre sitting inside.
bo-here [by the cube] you're protected only by the sound, not physically> its a little bit more soothing a deeper more ____like sound.
interview magalie ponce

mp-the good thing is you have a couple sounds of 4th street in new york and they become so common and so familiar when youre this far away that in a sense you seemuch more of the differences and appreciate the similarities more ....im sure i would have forgotten how linz sounds...if i werent aware of this relationship.
bo- your brain is filtering
mp- in a sense this makes you stop and think that you are abroad, in a different context and have to register that
bo- how do you feel about the difference of raw and transformed traffic
mp- to me its just a musical interpretation of it, it just adds another layer, i dont tend to compare it to reality that much, its just a separate source thats filtered through your artistic ____i dont necissisarily try to compare.<> it feels like another world itjust doesnt feel real though it technically is reality it does feel like the alteration or the way you capture that sound or whatever you did to modify that sound it feels foreign not necissisarily real
bo-how does the sound of the traffic make you feel?
mp- i like traffic, i like traffic, the sound of the motorcycles really give you a sense of the climate, it has more variations than united states, all big cars and here there..........
interview sophia from australia
s-ive just moved from sydney to helsinki and itsactually really different kind of sound environment t how people react with the sound t outside because australia the climate is conducive tohaving poorly sound insulated houses so sound from outside really impacts and moving to helsinki the windows are triple glazed for winter theres a lot of insulation actually inside houses is really really quiet and the relationship to thee traffic outside is really different, its actually....
bo-sheltered
s-when youre in your house with the windows shut you cant hear anything outside <> i just moved from a house that has parrots in the garden, lots of crazy birds busses going by lots of crazy birds neighbors, you can hear into the night, its a little bit isolating its nice, peace and quiet,deeps you awake at night you feel a little bit cut off.from listening the world going on around you ..that i used to do in my house in sydney i listened, i would not nput on music id listen to life going on, it does get hot in helsinki and it does get cold in sydney but the balance is that the architecture in helsinki is defined by the cold and the architecture in sydney is defined by thewarmth....
bo- so that alters the hearing sphere around you
s-houses in sydney tend to be more porous to sound getting out and coming in
bo-how do you feel about the difference between the traffic sound untreated and the sound thats been harmonically treated?
s- i actually like listening to traffic and city sounds and listening for the musics that are in them as a way of not being opressed by sound of traffic actually listen to little sounds that are in there and sometimes i record them pull little sounds out of it and make stuff out of it, sounds from public spaces that are really considered noisey, its really kind of lovely to hear this sort of resonance amplified in situ in relation to it so its not imagining what can come out of that sound and going away and doing it but to enhance that aspect of traffic as it goes over the bridges and road it makes it much more enjoyable, its not competing with it, like radios and this sort of thing trying to cover up, masking, but making a feature of it trying to integrate it.
bo- masking, helsinki shut it out
s- the sphere of attention moves completely, actually noise can also do that, shut out your sphere of attention by blocking out what else is behind that, blocking out sthe sounds of birds or peiple, actually like here, there are quite a lot of people about but trafic is louder than that so attention goes out into the traffic, it doesnt reach across the road, down there, down there [danube trail]
bo-youve done a lot of thinking about urban soundscapes
s- i live in cities and i listen
bo- attention, for the relationship between hearing and the sound landscape around?
s-thats a big point of how it works, you can record something with a cmicrophone and you cant pick out the different things you could when you are in the space, ____more here
bo-how would you say your attention is altered by this installation?
s-well its kind of a little bit artificial because i just came out of the installation, but if i hypothesized that i would have just come out of this traffic there and run across this thing that has this resonance with the traffic it might actually make me nauseous, this reduced listening to the traffic rathere than blocking it out to think about something else, or hear another conversation, i think its really interesting to approach the idea of noise polution with something that is about listening rather than supressing, i dont want to project meaning on what youre doing here. <>
kurt h interview
kh-"i think its just a filtering really, that kind of transforms the sound into something maybe more humane, something very meditative, i'm sure its not new to you"
kh-"unfiltered traffic is sort of anoying.. to me its an anoying kind of sound mostly, the filtered thing is much more the quality of sea, its soothing, thats whats really happening. its a cleansing thing sort of, it becomes more.....the thing is this, you have a beautiful day, and then you have like this traffic, its a natural thing by now traffic sounds natural by now, nevertheless, you think its sort of anoying, to my ear, its really unpleasant. to my ear, traffic sounds pleasant only when its filtered." this<raw traffic> is harsh and brutal.