Just what in tarnation is a “sound dial” anyway?
It's an auricle. It's a machine that allows you to travel through space because it brings the spaces to you.
In a world filled with mindless action and thoughtless consumerism that is based in the visual discourse pandemic to our culture, Harmony in the Age of Noise is an intentional soundscape that encourages human interaction and thoughtful listening.
Harmony in the Age of Noise has brought together various members of the Tufts community to interact with one another in ways they traditionally don’t, over technologies and methods of production that have never been seen before. The project is the result of collaboration between artists from NY and Boston, Tufts faculty, students, administration, and staff, students from the Boston area, and the faith and determination of the brightest lights on the planet.
A Crucible of Community
As a piece of public art, the project’s site specificity and ability to create community has been conscious from its inception, through production and installation, and will hopefully continue to do so during its exhibition. The complexity of this project has meant much overtime work to complete - a year and a half project to be completed in a semesters time frame, relying heavily on student volunteers and other in-kind participation. The complexity means that the working concepts behind the project are mindfully worked into the process, and that the process itself is comprised of several different components.
Photograph by Deniz Hotamisligil
Over the course of the semester, Bruce has been holding workshops with students at Tufts and at other community schools. These workshops, which he playfully calls “ear yoga exercises:” are meant to encourage people to become aware of their sonic environment. For example, students are told to give themselves a sound to identify themselves with – a clap, a whistle, a chirp, a cough – they then close their eyes and, repeating their respective sounds, try to form a perfect circle using only the echolocative capacities of our sonic systems. It is incredibly surprising how accurate we can situate ourselves in relation to our surroundings using only sound. Surprising to us, maybe, but not to Bruce.
Learning to "See" with the Ears
Still equipped with the hunter-gather sense of our ancestors, we homo sapien sapiens have an acute sense of hearing designed for survival. In today’s society, however, we are indoctrinated to tune out, to deafen ourselves for the sake of consumptive demands. Progressive this idea may be, in a world run by money, any thing that makes a noise is willed into creation as long as it can draw a profit. As a result, the noise floor of unintention has risen to dangerous levels. A linear production economy in an environment of increasingly limited resources is not sustainable, and our sonic reality is screaming at us to listen. However, what do we do? We turn on the television, our ipods, our cars, and we tune out the noises of a dying system. The working thesis behind this project is slowing down to become aware of our sonic environment.
After opening themselves to their sonic environment with Bruce, students then went out with hi-fi recorders and took samples – the school cafeteria, the computer lab, the subway, Davis Square. These student sound maps, referred to as psycho-acoustic maps because they reflect the individual sonic realities of the people making them, were collected, plotted on a geographic map, and then stored in a computer.
At the Heart of Harmony: Sound Dial & Gazebo
This computer lives in the "sound dial" - a conglomeration of cutting-edge technologies interfacing with one another for the first time. 
When people first hear “sound dial,” they think “sun dial.” Similarly shaped, the sound dial houses a computer and a compass and its head, a circular disc, rotates three-hundred and sixty degrees. Instead of informing the individual of the time using the shadow of the sun, the dial uses the shadows of sonic memory to inform the individual of the local sound environment.
The sound dial will reside in the R.-Buckminster-Fuller-inspired-gazebo-sculpture designed by Mark McNamara. Six “J” structures swirling to form two equilateral triangles imposed upon one another in a Star of David, the sculpture uses mathematical forms to focus the electromagnetic energy of the cosmos. The structure was built with student and community volunteers, with the advice of sculptors and landscape artists, and the use of recycled sheets, cardboard, and wood.
Atop the highest hill in the Greater Boston area, from the sound dial, one can see the entire city. As an individual approaches the sound dial, they will hear nothing. Underneath a parabolic dome, the sound of the dial will be encased in a channel of sound. This is the nature of the parabola; Creating a uniform gravitation field without air resistance, parabolic reflectors harness electromagnetic radiation to a specific focal point - in this case, the sound dial.
Under the dome, you can hear the monk-chanting-like didgeridoo sounds of Boston Avenue. These sounds are streaming live from the tuning tube installation that Bruce and Mark placed atop the Brown and Brew several weeks ago, a piece of equipment invented by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O + A) and used in several of their installations. The dial sings Boston Ave in the key of E. This is the default mode of the dial.
When you place your hands on the dial, the colors morph from blue to red, the sounds change, and images begin to appear in the whale’s eye center of the dial. The computer’s software activates. The compass locates the direction that the user is facing, and begins to pull up the sounds and images of the psychoacoustic student maps. The faster you move the dial, the less information you get. Move too quickly and you receive unintelligible noises and static images. The slower you move, stories begin emerge.
If the dial is facing Powderhouse rotary, the sounds of cars circling around will shroud you, and images of cars will appear in the whale’s eye. If you are facing Tufts’ computer lab, you will see students at the computers, and hear the clicking of keys. I created a spiritual sound map of Boston, which includes a full moon drum circle held by musician friends of mine in Jamaica Plain, as well as Kirtan at the Krishna Temple on Commonwealth Ave. If you have slowed down enough, as you cross from one area to the next, the sounds and images begin to cross-fade. To encourage human interaction, the dial’s colors and sounds react to the number of hands placed upon it.
Finally, the dial also has a clocktower function. When Bruce arrived at Tufts campus, one of the first things he noticed was that the church bell chime was missing some important notes. To him, the sounds were blatantly off, yet he was the only one to ever notice. Since then, he has been working with the organ player at the church to create his own chime, which will play at the opening. To make up for the missing chimes in the clocktower, the sound dial allows the public to upload their own sounds into the dial through this website, which will then be played on the dial the following half-hour.
Photograph by Deniz Hotamisligil
- Sarah Moshontz de la Rocha
We invite you to read more about the many talented, generous people involved here. Also check out our Blog, which chronicles the creation process of this multidimensional piece.