{"id":16246,"date":"2013-07-16T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T10:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=16246"},"modified":"2013-07-16T07:40:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T11:40:30","slug":"new-york-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/07\/16\/new-york-noise\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Noise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea that technology and techno-scientific urbanization\/development is making life more noisy is not new. Luigi Russolo wrote about this in his famous futurist manifesto\u00a0The Art of Noise<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cIn antiquity,\u201d he argues, \u201clife was nothing but silence. Noise was not really born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility\u201d (4). Russolo\u2019s manifesto was written in 1913. \u201cON IT<\/a>\u201d like usual, The New York Times<\/em> published a couple <\/a>of stor<\/a>ies about it last week.<\/p>\n

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Not all of NYC’s noise was bad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While it\u2019s certainly not news that cities are noisy, the Times<\/em> article does suggest that the politics of urban noise have changed significantly since Russolo\u2019s time. Urban noise works (or produces political effects) differently because it is understood differently–it\u2019s not industrial and machinic, but post-industrial and affective.<\/p>\n

The second article linked above treats noise as a toxin that contaminates what you might call our \u201caffect system\u201d–like the body\u2019s limbic system or cardiovascular system, but instead of managing hormones or blood oxyegenation, it manages affective tenor—stress, happiness, well-being.<\/p>\n

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Beyond harming hearing, chronic exposure to noise increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Children in classrooms buffeted by outside noise lag behind, and their teachers report lower job satisfaction. Pervasive background noise may damage the hearing center of babies\u2019 developing brains, research has found, possibly leading to auditory and language-related development delays. And though people may assume they have grown accustomed to noise, a constant din, even at low frequencies, often takes a heavy physiological toll. Noise can cause stress even when a person is sleeping.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Noise elevates levels of negative affective response–stress, anxiety, distraction, uneasiness. These negative affects then impede us from functioning at maximum capacity. The problem with noise isn\u2019t aesthetic–it\u2019s not ugly, irrational, or offensive. Noise isn\u2019t disruptive, either; we still go on with our day\u2019s work or night\u2019s rest, just at diminished capacity. Noise prevents us from flourishing. It produces ill health.\u00a0That\u2019s why it is treated as a toxin.<\/p>\n

As with all toxins, exposure to noise is determined by privilege—wealthy Manhattanites can soundproof their penthouses, but Queens residents have to suffer through continued clamor as they appeal to bureaucratic processes designed to regulate noise pollution. So privileged Manhattanites can, like the fabled princess who was so sensitive she could feel a pea under a tower of mattresses, retain their finely-tuned senses\/sensibilities.<\/p>\n

This association between aesthetic sensitivity and privilege is interesting because it reverses 20th-century trends…the very trends set, in part, by Russolo\u2019s manifesto. Russolo was worried that traditional musical sounds were too pure<\/em> to have any affective punch:<\/p>\n

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In the pounding atmosphere of great cities as well as in the formerly silent countryside, machines create today such a large number of varied noises that pure sound,\u00a0with its littleness and its monotony, now fails to arouse any emotion (Russolo, 5).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Russolo thought we needed industrial noise to reinvigorate art music. \u201cWe get infinitely more pleasure imagining combinations of the sounds of trolleys, autos and other vehicles, and loud\u00a0crowds,\u201d he argues, \u201cthan listening once more, for instance, to the heroic or pastoral\u00a0symphonies\u201d (6). Modernist aesthetics value transgression and difficulty. The ability to tolerate and appreciate noise was a sign of avant-garde taste; so, cultural elites stereotypically valued \u201cnoisy\u201d works, while the unwashed masses preferred kitsch. In the Times<\/em> article, this modernist association between noise tolerance and privilege is reversed: sensitivity is a privilege reserved for those with means to protect themselves from it and preserve their delicate aural\/affective palate, and noise-tolerance is the effect of exposure. Sonic ecologies should be (re)purified. You can even see this reversal in contemporary pop music aesthetics: mainstream pop–from the Biebs to Skrillex–is really noisy, while hipsters and NPR listeners prefer traditionally pretty, harmonious, folk-y, \u201cnew sincerity\u201d-style artists.<\/p>\n

To me, it seems sorta weird to complain about noise in the city that brought us scratching and No Wave (and everyone should check out Caroline O\u2019Meara\u2019s great work<\/a> on NYC, geography, & No Wave). But then, those were products of the divested city, the Bronx & pre-Guilianni downtown left to \u201cdrop dead<\/a>.\u201d In the redeveloped, fully-neoliberalized contemporary Manhattan, maybe sounds become \u201cnoise\u201d–that is, they become a problem–when they are wasteful, unrecycled by-products of other activities?<\/p>\n

The article largely discusses noise as byproduct of (re)development, the unattractive waste from capitalist projects. \u00a0Manhattan residents, given their overall wealth and privilege, are already structurally insulated from such byproducts–it\u2019s not their water that gets contaminated by natural gas fracking, for example. Construction noise, however, can\u2019t be outsourced because real estate redevelopment is necessarily place-specific. Apple can make your iPhones in China, but real estate speculators can\u2019t tear down and rebuild Manhattan real estate anywhere but on site. These redevelopment projects, which intensify and magnify the value of already-valuable property, generate \u201ctoxic\u201d byproducts. Noise–especially construction and transportation noise, which is the focus of much of the article–is a \u201cproblem\u201d for Manhattanites because it is one of the few byproducts of neoliberal development that can\u2019t be outsourced to less-privileged areas.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cMusic is a better noise\/Than rumbling catapults\/and fumbling cranes\u201d (Essential Logic, “Music Is A Better Noise”).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If noise is so sickening to privileged constitutions, I wonder what this means for the political possibilities of new types of industrial music. What kinds of noises would be musically or sonically toxic<\/em> (rather than machinic, as in trad industrial, or glitchy, as in cyberpunk)? (Interestingly, toxicity was a common lyrical theme in 90s goth\/industrial…but what about musical\/sonic toxicity?) How would they work politically?<\/p>\n

Those are genuine questions–I don\u2019t even have a tentative response to them. So, if you have any thoughts, I\u2019d be very happy to hear them below.<\/p>\n

Follow Robin on Twitter: @doctaj.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea that technology and techno-scientific urbanization\/development is making life more noisy is not new. Luigi Russolo wrote about this in his famous futurist manifesto\u00a0The Art of Noise.\u00a0\u201cIn antiquity,\u201d he argues, \u201clife was nothing but silence. Noise was not really born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[2265,19980,12225,115,1070,3162,22908,3833,3312],"class_list":["post-16246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-aesthetics","tag-affect","tag-manhattan","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-times","tag-noise","tag-pollution","tag-privilege"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16246"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16262,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16246\/revisions\/16262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}