Very very very basic.

White spaces are indoors, blue are outlets to the outdoors or the outdoors themselves.
The rings are closer to the source of the sound, the size of the rings and distance are determined by how loud they start and how far they spread.

ROUGH ROUGH draft.




I compared different sound snippets and they're wavelengths in garage band.

There are many ways to express sound visually. The most common are the sound waves we are familiar with seeing in textbooks or the one's on your computer that are produced to look like they flow with the music.

Do I want to stick to this widely known visual concept of sound or do I want to create my own.

Do I express noise in a media not so scientific but more graphic? Whose to say that the lines of a wavelength aren't graphic or pleasing. I like the idea for free form organic shapes, I could possibly do something with type. I can possibly spell the things I hear the way I hear them and make them look the way I hear them.

But I would also like to categorize the sounds I hear. Music, people talking to me/people talking, animals, electronics, etc.

The following is from this site.


Here's what sound waves look like. The caption reads, "A visible pattern of sound waves. This new technique of studying sound demonstrates the focusing effect of an acoustical lens on sound waves issuing from the horn at extreme left. Wave pattern is produced by a scanning technique . . ." Bell Telephone Laboratories photograph, from the book The First Book of Sound: A Basic Guide to the Science of Acoustics by David C. Knight, Franklin Watts, Inc. New York (1960). p. 80



The Physics of Sound
Put simply, sound is vibration. As such, sound can pass through many different substances - in fact, it requires the presence of a medium. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum.

The most common medium within which we perceive sound is, of course, air. Various movements around us cause vibrations in air molecules, and this sound energy is transported outwards as waves. Much in the same way as waves move across the surface of a pond, so does sound move through the air. Once the action that caused the waves ceases, then the pond will gradually return to its original position, as if nothing had happened.

Sound also travels through water, and can travel through solids too, such as wood, brick, iron and so on. The ease with which it can do so depends upon the composition of the medium, and the nature of the sound itself. Different frequencies can move more easily through certain substances than others, and some frequencies travel further than others. Approaching a concert, for example, you may well hear the thumping of the bass drum before all else.

Waves travel as a transfer of energy within a medium - a wave is essentially a sequence of compressions (moving together) and rarefactions (moving apart) of molecules





Properties Of A Wave

A number of properties are commonly used to define a wave. The wavelength may be defined as the horizontal distance between two successive equivalent points on the waveform. For convenience, these two points are usually taken at peaks (highest point) or troughs (lowest).

The period then is the time it takes for the wave to complete one full cycle.

The amplitude equates to the height of the wave; loud sounds produce waves of higher amplitude. The loudness or intensity of sound is measured in decibels; however, it must be remembered that this is not a linear or absolute scale of measurement. The lowest threshold of human hearing is set at zero; a decibel is sometimes defined as the smallest change in volume discernable by a human. For a doubling in volume, the decibel level goes up by six. Within this scale, normal speech levels fit in at around 60dB.

The frequency of a wave is the number of cycles that pass a set point in a second, and is measured in Hertz (Hz). Frequency is intimately connected to pitch, although they are not exactly synonymous; the A above middle C is a vibration at a rate of 440 Hz. Lower frequency vibrations are perceived as being lower in pitch, and higher frequencies seem higher in pitch.
Basic Interference Patterns

Sound, like all waves, rarely occurs in isolation. Every day, the world around us is awash with sounds, from the rustling of leaves to the roaring of engines. All of these sounds interact with one another, and with all the elements and obstacles of their environment. Hence, the same sound sources can sound vastly different depending upon the position of the listener in relation to them.

A practical example can illustrate how soundwaves interfere with one another. We can set up two loudspeakers located at a distance of three metres from the listener. The speakers are producing the same tone, with a wavelength of one metre. The speakers� diaphragms are also moving in synchrony - that is, they both move in and out at the same time.



As the distances are equal, the compressions of each wave (peaks) are reaching the listener at the same time. A process of linear superposition then occurs - the combined pattern of the waves is the sum of the individual wave patterns. As the pressure of both waves is waxing at the same time, the pressure fluctuations where the two waves meet exhibits twice the amplitude of the individual waves. This means that the waves are exactly in phase - creating a condition known as constructive interference.

However, if one of the speakers is moved half a wavelength further away from the listener (in this example, half a metre), then an entirely different effect will be observed. The rarefactions (troughs) of one of the waves will now reach the listener at the same time as the compressions (peaks) of the other. Following the same additive principles as before, the variations in air pressure now cancel each other out. This is destructive interference, when two signals are perfectly out of phase. Noise-cancelling headphones use this technique to reduce unwanted ambient sounds.


Beat Patterns

Now that we know what happens when two sound waves with the same frequency overlap, let's explore what happens when two sound waves with different frequencies overlap. Two instrument tuners are placed side by side, one set to emit a sound whose frequency is 440 Hz and the other set to emit a sound whose frequency is 438 Hz. If the two tuners (which have the same amplitude) are turned on at the same time, you will not hear a constant sound. Instead, the loudness of the combined sound rises and falls. Whenever a condensation meets a condensation or a rarefaction meets a rarefaction, there is constructive interference and the amplitude increases. Whenever a condensation meets a rarefaction and vice versa, there is destructive interference, and you can hear nothing. These periodic variations in loudness are called beats. In this situation you will hear the loudness rise and fall 2 times per second because 440-438=2. So, there is a beat frequency of 2 Hz. Musicians listen for beats to hear if their instruments are out of tune. The musician will listen to a tuner that has the correct sound and plays the note on his instrument. If the musician can hear beats, then he knows that the instrument is out of tune. When the beats disappear, the musician knows the instrument is in tune.

SOUND SOUND SOUND SOUNNNNNND

This was Tuesday:
Given the time and the frustration and lack of creativity I mapped out my aggravation levels on the route to school.







These were the retarded ideas I had:

The voice of my fellow New Yorker calling me through the window

The train rider ratio of crazy to normal people on the trip from my Brooklyn flat to FIT

How well I know the area in which my parents used to live and how little I know of where they just moved and how it is only 3miles apart or less but so completely different.

Winter dryness.

Getting the English cold.

Mapping out everything I've ever wanted to be when I grow up and see how it stemmed off into the field I'm in now.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So the voices through my window, door, wall, ceiling, etc, got me thinking. MAYBE I'll map out sound. Everything I hear. How it affects me? How it interacts with my surroundings? My brain? Hm. HMMMM

Let the research begin!


SOUND, physical compressions through a medium
Audible compression waves, as used in music
A speech sound, or phone, in phonetics


Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave (through fluids as a compression wave, and through solids as both compression and shear waves). Sound is further characterized by the generic properties of waves, which are frequency, wavelength, period, amplitude, speed, and direction (sometimes speed and direction are combined as a velocity vector, or wavelength and direction are combined as a wave vector).

Humans perceive sound by the sense of hearing. By sound, we commonly mean the vibrations that travel through air and are audible to people. However, scientists and engineers use a wider definition of sound that includes low and high frequency vibrations in the air that cannot be heard by humans, and vibrations that travel through all forms of matter, gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas.

The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound propagates as waves of alternating pressure, causing local regions of compression and rarefaction. Particles in the medium are displaced by the wave and oscillate. The scientific study of the absorption and reflection of sound waves is called acoustics.

Noise is often used to refer to an unwanted sound. In science and engineering, noise is an undesirable component that obscures a wanted signal.


SOUND PRESSURE

As the human ear can detect sounds with a very wide range of amplitudes, sound pressure is often measured as a level on a logarithmic decibel scale.

The sound pressure level (SPL) or Lp is defined as


where p is the root-mean-square sound pressure and p0 is a reference sound pressure. Commonly used reference sound pressures, defined in the standard ANSI S1.1-1994, are 20 uPa in air and 1 µPa in water. Without a specified reference level, a value expressed in decibels cannot represent a sound pressure level.

Since the human ear does not have a flat spectral response, sound pressure levels are often frequency weighted so that the measured level will match perceived levels more closely. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has defined several weighting schemes. A-weighting attempts to match the response of the human ear to noise and A-weighted sound pressure levels are labeled dBA. C-weighting is used to measure peak levels.

Mapping the Territories.

So, typically, I get an assignment that CLEARLY states to chill out and not get to complicated but one of the only ideas that keeps popping into my head are these images of religion v. reality. The things that religion make difficult because they make it wrong to the rest of the world and at the same time telling us not to judge one another, yadda yadda. How do I map out the faults in religion?

Blah.

Speaking of religion, here's something I did in the past.





Maybe like a road to heaven with a crap load of detours that are filled with the judgemental nonsense that religion uses to suck the life out of you sometimes, or some of of its contradicitons, or who knows.

I've got to think harder and simplify an idea that won't blow up in my face when I try and execute it.


I would even like to destroy that approach completely and think of something way more lighthearted.

Maybe a map of my drinking patterns or the gross stains on the residence hall walls. Hm.


I don't want to get personal like blah blah my life story blah blah, besides, if you cared about my life story, you can just ask me over a beer or a coffee.


Maybe I can map out how being in London has changed my New York adjusted body and given me the shittiest cold ever, and makes my snot black and my ears dirty, and makes my big hair fall out. That might get a bit graphic and disgusting. But hey, I am sorta graphic and disgusting.

Assigment #1 (YOU ARE HERE)

A lot of New Yorkers have a problem with tourists and being tourists themselves. I however, don't really give a hoot. It's my first time being REALLY away from home, and I am okay with the idea of being the stranger here. I have no problem asking for directions and looking like a fool.

Youtube destroyed my images, it looks better on facebook but you can't link facebook videos.