public domain
NY Times (2 July 1905): part 3, p.3
the roaring twenties
history project | recording the streets by emily thompson
noise urbanism new york sonic culture audial maps
Sound is a crucial element in our experience of urban space, constantly shaping the ways we interact with both the social and physical dimensions of city life. Nonetheless, soundscapes have long been under-explored within urban design and architecture, and have been even more neglected by historians attempting to understand urban environments of the past. This situation has begun to change, however, and as the internet makes easily available an ever-increasing quantity of historical sound recordings, the opportunity for deploying this material to achieve that understanding is evident. The challenge is to present these recordings in a way that enables a historicised mode of listening that tunes our modern ears to the pitch of the past. The Roaring ‘Twenties is a website dedicated to that challenge, a sonic time machine that attempts to recreate for its listeners not just the
sound of the past but also its sonic culture. It offers a virtual environment whereby listeners are transported back to New York City in the late 1920s, a place and time defined by its din. The Roaring ‘Twenties does not offer the kind of simulated environment typically seen, for example, in video games; there is no three-dimensional rendering of a virtual Broadway down which avatar flappers and gangsters stroll. Instead, it offers an informational environment of media and data, a network of historical content and context that works with the user’s imagination. The goal is to construct a historically-oriented mindset which loops back upon the data to embed users ever- more deeply into a sense of – and sensory engagement with – the past as they chart their own journeys through this environment.
19
City Noise (New York City Department of Health, 1930) p255
courtesy Municipal Archives of the City of New York
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