An excerpt from an audio installation i did for the 2010 edition of the Bank of Nova Scotia’s ‘Nuit Blanche’. It is one of my first pieces using infrasound, or frequencies on or below the threshold of human hearing. More info can be found here:
PLEASE NOTE THAT, DUE TO THE NATURE OF INFRASOUND, HEADPHONES OR A SUBWOOFER ARE REQUIRED TO PROPERLY HEAR THE AUDIO.
Project synopsis:
When considering the gentrification of a neighbourhood, the discussion often revolves around the process’ impact on the ‘feel’ or ‘vibe’ of the area in question.
Recent changes in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood have elicited many such comments, often in relation to the shift in demographics engendered by the opening of the Drake Hotel and continuing with the construction of the condo behemoth known as the Bohemian Embassy.
‘The Humming of Summer Sidewalks’ transforms Parkdale’s soundscape to a frequency which is experienced primarily as vibration, and thus feeling, rather than audible sound.
Several audio recordings of walks down Queen Street (from Roncesvalles to Ossington) were made over the course of the summer of 2010. These recordings were then filtered and spectrally processed in order to remove most of the sonic detail and transpose the frequencies to the infrasonic/subsonic level. The length of the piece is that of the length of the walks, with no time-based editing of the audio.