SoundAffects Installation

To all students, faculty, and staff at Parsons:

Beginning today, an installation called SoundAffects, located along the facade of 68 Fifth Avenue (near the 13th Street corner), is turning street activity into music. This is an experiential project designed by the creative agency mono to highlight Parsons’ unique, creative approaches to social problem-solving, and it will be on display and open to your participation through May 22.

There are sensors along the installation that pick up movement, temperature, sound intensity, color, proximity, and cell phone activity. The sensor data is then used to generate music driven by these various environmental factors.

Feel free to interact directly with SoundAffects by plugging earphones into the jacks that dot the wall installation, or go online to www.soundaffectsnyc.com to listen, see the same data visualized in color, and learn more about the project.

We also want to invite and encourage you to influence the music! Through May 17, mono will be conducting a number of “experiments”:

●    On May 16 at 7:00 am, we’ll have a picnic in the parking spaces in front of the entrance at Fifth and 13th. Bring some friends and a blanket to sit on. We’ll have sod laid down over the concrete.

●    On May 16 at 11:00 am, we’ll have a hopscotch course out in front of the installation. Join in and see how something as simple as recess can affect the timbre of a city block.

●    On May 17 at 4:00 pm, we would love for you to get out your phones and dial the number you’ll see displayed prominently on our block. Does being connected speed us up, or might it slow us down just as much?

These are just a few examples, and a full list of mono’s planned experiments is available at www.soundaffectsnyc.com-you’re welcome to participate in any of them as well as to design your own. If you have an experiment that you’d like to stage on the street between May 18 and May 22, please reply to this message to let us know.