ALUMNI EXPERIENCE NEW YORK IN AUDIO AT CITY’S “CENTRAL PARK SOUND TUNNEL”
reversal adding a psychedelic element. The exhibit closed on
By Alex Vadukul ’07 September 1, 2009
work with music boxes, spent a year collecting recordings
September 10, 2009. Morton, an experimental composer known for his inventive
around the park for the exhibit. “I started to go out into the park and do all these surreptitious recordings without people knowing,” he says. Morton aimed to gather as many interesting sounds as possible. He is particularly fond of the sounds recorded at last year’s Make Music New York, an annual day-long festival in which thousands of musicians, amateur and professional, emerge to make music around the city, many of them in Central Park. “I would say literally every 20 or 30 feet there was a musician doing something,” he says. “There was a kid sitting by the boat pond playing Beatles hits on his violin.” Indeed, one of the exhibits’ highlights is a charming rendering of “Eleanor Rigby” on the violin. Sound installations are rare in Central Park and Morton’s is the first to make use of one of the park’s hallowed tunnels. “I’d always wanted to do a tunnel exhibit,” says Clare Weiss, curator
P
eople travel from all over the world to experience
of public art programs for NYC Parks. “John really latched onto
the strange tranquility of Central Park—843 acres
this idea that people act differently in tunnels—they shout and
of scenic nature in the middle of New York City. But
listen to echoes.” She adds that children respond to the exhibit
this summer visitors have been accosted by sound
right away, “They start jumping and zooming around,” she says.
as they pass through one of the park’s tunnels near the children’s
The computer that randomly programs the performances is
zoo. Six speakers perched inside the tunnel play a loud but artful
located in the attic of a zoo building nearby. Morton says that the
arrangement of sounds recorded around the park over the course
random nature of the exhibit may seem simplistic, but it has
of a year. Listeners can experience the entire sonic nature of the
meaning to it. “I was really interested in the sense of New York
world’s most famous park in one sitting.
being a city of coincidence,” he says. “Where everything is
Each performance of John Morton’s sound installation,
so packed together that you have these coincidences, things
known as the “Central Park Sound Tunnel,” lasts 20 minutes and
overlapping each other. If you listen to it, sometimes it’s
starts anew on the hour and half-hour with the chiming of the
mundane, but sometimes the coincidences are amazing and
nearby Delacorte clock. Performances are all different, randomly
all you can say is ’Wow.’ I wanted that to be the overlying
generated by a computer program. The rich collage of sounds
principle of the piece.”
can include musicians playing in the park, penguins in the zoo, ducks in the pond, loud New Yorkers, snow being shoveled, leaves being raked, and countless other noises. Sounds are often tied together with effects like delay, warbling, looping, and
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