original mNAP (listening pod) in Ahmedabad
I’m looking forward to working at the Unbox Festival in Delhi at the end of this month on a collaborative project funded by the AHRC. I’ll be leading the project and creating the sound track for an installation aimed at raising public awareness of sound pollution. It’s a follow-on project from the work our team did in Ahmedabad (also India) last February/March. The Ahmedebad sound installation track is below (NB it begins very quietly and remains quiet for quite a while):
A video about the Ahmedabad Labs made by Alice Masters:
The public description from our grant proposal:
This collaborative project – involving a composer, architect, community-building project manager / development scholar, film maker, electronics engineer and graphic designer – aims to draw public attention to the levels of noise pollution in Indian cities, with a particular focus on Delhi, which is now considered one of the top 10 mega-cities in the world. Whilst peace and quiet are essential to rest and recuperation, city traffic and other noise pollution can deleteriously affect human health by raising blood pressure and heart rate, disturbing sleep, and causing hearing loss or in extreme cases deafness. The “mobile Noise Abatement Pod” (mNAP) is a portable soundproof box which will be used as a ‘social condenser’: an object that will attract attention in its own right; will invite participants to comment on their experience of it and their desires for the sonic landscape of the future of their city; and will act as a container for people to immerse themselves into the soundscape of contemporary life in both rural and urban contexts (and thus from quiet to loud) in order to raise awareness of the disruptive effects of high levels of noise. Through online and other documentation, through presentation at the UnBox Festival in Delhi, and by offering the sound installation and mNAP designs online, we hope to leave a legacy that will inform and energise other organisations and groups to campaign for a quieter, more healthy environment in other cities around India and the world.
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