2014

Role: Sound Artist

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Background: After coming across Matthew Herbert’s seminal One Pig, a masterpiece of audio-visual art, set in the sampling domain, I was inspired to do something on the same lines. I decided to make the city my subject, and armed with a recorded hidden in my jacket, I walked the city of Boston, collecting samples and sounds. The piece is entirely sourced with these sounds, and no external instrumentation was added.

About: Wandering 1.0: Boston is a piece composed entirely of sounds collected during a set of walks around Boston – sounds capturing the essence of the modern city – from ATM’s, money, and machines, to the more organic – birds and human voices; from footsteps to cars. The piece aims to explore Boston of today through the sounds it comprises.

The text for the piece (and the main narrative theme) comes from a conversation surreptitiously recorded with a homeless person on Newbury Street by prodding him with questions such as who he was, and how he became homeless. I had been trying to capture the dichotomy between nature and machines, corporate greed and inequality, but the perspective of this homeless man was so different and inspiring that the wonder and wisdom he was brimming with became the centerpiece of the piece.

P.S. Do watch this 10 minute clip on One Pig