The Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab has a very interesting online journal called Sensate: A Journal for Experiments in Critical Media Practice.The website for the journal is beautifully designed, and breaks many conventions in regards to publishing (e.g. chronology of articles).
One of the journal's articles is about a topic that has often been discussed in this blog quite frequently - the underground, or more specifically in this case Sounding Underground.
The article by Ximena Alarcon examines underground life in the subways of London, Paris and Mexico City, using a collage of photographs, text and sound recordings, displayed in non-linear format using Zeega. Some of the screens work better than others (the screens with websites in motion are somewhat nauseating), but those that do work well (soundscapes and photographs in particular) give a colourful, cacophonous sense of underground life that would be difficult to achieve with text alone.
Image of Alfred Beach's pneumatic underground idea from InkBlueSky.
Dear Anna,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for writing about my article published in Zeega.
I'd like to point out that this article should not be confused with the original Internet-based sonic environment Sounding Underground which you can find at http://soundingunderground.org. I suspect that your experience with the original artwork would be different from that of the Zeega site.
Best wishes,
Ximena
Thanks for pointing that out Ximena!
ReplyDelete