Bobst Library Installation

HOW TO LISTEN TO IT

From below (stand in the Atrium’s ground floor)! From above (go to the catwalks on floors 9, 10, and 11)! Wandering from level to level . . .Without an NYU access pass: you may listen, any day, from behind the turnstiles. For access to the library to see/hear the installation from inside, please contact me (or AFC at Bobst) to assist in arranging this.

RETU(R)NINGS (vers 1.0 and 2.0)

Composer, sound designer, and programmer: Elizabeth Hoffman

Idea team: Kent Underwood, musicologist and Bobst Music Librarian, and Martin Daughtry, ethnomusicologist, who envisioned the installation’s creation beginning in 2017

Visual Design of Speaker case sculptures: René Pierre Allain

http://renepierreallain.com/

Speakers made by:

HEDD Audio GmbH (Berlin, Germany)

More thanks: to initial brainstorming from Daniel Neumann; to support from Sally Cummings; to extensive beta testing and monitoring by Scott Greenberg, Avery Fisher Center audio and visual technician; to the NYU Committee for Public Art for approving the development and installation of this project; to Jennifer Coutts Clay for funding for the materials cost of the installation; to NYU’s Provost, Katherine Fleming, and her team of publicists including Sarah Binney, for their ability to envision this installation and its integration with the Bobst Atrium.

WHAT IT IS

RETU(R)NINGS is an artistic sonification of daily datasets that are collected through the turnstile access, and stored by NYU IT on an hourly basis. Version 1.0 uses the data for timbral generation; Version 2.0 uses it for melodic purposes, with residual harmonies emerging. The intention of the installation is not didactic, though an attentive listener will certainly begin to hear patterns that correlate with the datasets. The 24-hour number patterns suggest functions, and respond to changes in external events.

The turnstile data cycle used in the sonifications moves from midnight to midnight.

The sound is designed as a multi-channel sound installation, with two speakers on the 8^th floor catwalk and two speakers on the 4^th floor catwalk. They face inwards, hit no reflective surfaces directly, and diffuse into an open space that is approximately 1,080,000 cubic feet. The frequency response of the Atrium is sensitive across the spectrum. The sound diffused is intended to merge with and embrace, and to give the illusion of arising from the ambient sounds that already pervade the Atrium – the elevators, in particular; student conversations; phones ringing. RETU(R)NINGS musicalizes this ambience.

The acoustic resonance of the Atrium is profoundly interesting in that the materials of the space are almost exclusively marble or other stone, and metals. The stone acts reflectively along numerous indirect paths, but the metal, especially the Pixel Veil, designed by NYC architect Joel Sanders, exerts a greater effect as a conductor and transducer, moving the sound around the perimeter. The Atrium becomes a resonator, and a large, live instrument – also being mediated and played by the people in it (in Bobst) at any given sunset. The Library users and their/our positions affect how the sound diffusion is masked and absorbed.

SCALING THE DATA

I’ve scaled the data so that the information is within the range of perceptible parameters, but it is otherwise untouched. The differences between the usage during the pandemic (including complete closure) and the gradual reopening are significant. VERS 2.0 interleaves two datasets in the generative template, such that the greater the difference, the less smooth are some potential continuities built into the structure.

WHAT IS AUDIBLE? WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE PERCEPTIBLE?

In Vers 1.0 the data contributes to the design of the instruments themselves, i.e., the timbres. The data is densely packed and mostly recondite, though it absolutely determines the sounds that arise. In Vers 2.0 the data is more audibly present—in contours, harmonies, and resonances. Still, the effect of the sonification is more evocative of a kaleidoscope than a microscope. In other words, the variegated output is the direct and explicit result of what is fed in; but hearing the dataset through the sounds is not the intention. That said, in Vers 2.0 the pandemic months are flatter and more spare harmonically.

WHY THIS IS NOT YET REAL TIME; CORRELATIONS WITH DATES

Eventually this installation will ideally be real time, using same day automatic correlation with visitor data if it becomes available on this basis. Eventually other types of Library usage data, other than turnstile traffic, may inform the sonifications.