Covid Station
May 22, 2020, 10:17 AM
Grand Central, New York lockdown sound reimagined by Ariel Mioduser.
"I found this sound so appealing because Grand Central station represents in a way such an opposite to the situation we’re going through now – one of social distancing, almost complete closure of the city and the cultural life, and limited freedom of movement.
"In addition, the sound and content of the Covid announcements that replace the usual ones about leaving trains and directions, manage to make palpable this dystopian situation and illustrate it in a very concise way.
"As for the creative approach, I tried to bridge the gap between those opposed realities through the use of sound. For example, by recreating the trains sound through the manipulation of the crowd voices, or by emphasizing the human voices, laughs and calls in a situation where they are much more absent than in regular times.
"In addition I tried to illustrate the atmosphere of alienation and distancing through the use of bass guitar and synthesizer sounds.
The piece ends with an ascending Shepard Tone effect that uses as its source the crowd voices. It is at the same time a somewhat terrifying and scaling up optimistic sound – much as this confusing and unclear period."
Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds
"I found this sound so appealing because Grand Central station represents in a way such an opposite to the situation we’re going through now – one of social distancing, almost complete closure of the city and the cultural life, and limited freedom of movement.
"In addition, the sound and content of the Covid announcements that replace the usual ones about leaving trains and directions, manage to make palpable this dystopian situation and illustrate it in a very concise way.
"As for the creative approach, I tried to bridge the gap between those opposed realities through the use of sound. For example, by recreating the trains sound through the manipulation of the crowd voices, or by emphasizing the human voices, laughs and calls in a situation where they are much more absent than in regular times.
"In addition I tried to illustrate the atmosphere of alienation and distancing through the use of bass guitar and synthesizer sounds.
The piece ends with an ascending Shepard Tone effect that uses as its source the crowd voices. It is at the same time a somewhat terrifying and scaling up optimistic sound – much as this confusing and unclear period."
Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds