"Signal to Noise Loops i++", uses a classic generative music system to convert data from sensors measuring noise levels, CO2 levels, and water levels across Dublin City throughout 2018 to music. This is followed by "The Good Ship Hibernia and the Hole in the Bottom of the World" a soundscape sonification representing Irish GDP growth rate from 1979 to 2013 with soundscape recordings. "Dublin City Noise Loops" involves a generative system that reacts to an improvised guitar performance, reorganizing the musical information on the basis of Noise level data from around the Dublin City in 2017.

For this episode of Sources of Uncertainty, I’ve chosen music that aligns with this year’s Alternating Current theme, ‘Urban Scores’. The idea of an urban score, drawing from the writing of Elena Biserna, invites us to look at cities as scores, and how cities themselves are scored, filled with sound, or responded to in sound. My show ranges from composed music responding to the rhythm and timbre of an urban environment to sound intervention within these environments themselves.

The show begins with Paul Lansky’s ‘Night Traffic’, a piece which began from recordings of the sound of traffic in New Jersey, a familiar rhythm is present from the start, with the doppler effect of passing traffic played first by guitar, with a gradual density of sound moving across the stereo field. Lansky said of Night Traffic "There is a kind of randomness, violence, and rhythmic intensity (and great Doppler shifts!) which draw upon and excite all sorts of musical perceptions."

Following this is a track from Lucy Railton’s 2020 album ‘S-Bahn’ which incorporates sound responses to the trains that pass Railton’s home. Slowly evolving synthesiser responds to the recorded rush and squeal of a train. Railton says:

On the other side of our backyard wall is Berlin’s main railway line, the Ringbahn. A train passes the apartment block about twenty times an hour, drowning out our conversations and waking us up at night. It is a communal annoyance you learn to love. It structures the shape of this place and enforces a rhythm. I’ve always been glad of these interludes, they provide rich listening material that heightens an otherwise peaceful sonic space. ‘5 S-Bahn’ is my attempt to inscribe part of my sonic location and my own position within it.

This track emphasises a key point in the interaction between music and urban environments, much like the frequent incorporation of birdsong to give a sense of seclusion and peace, the sound of passing traffic and the near-endless disruption of another urban-dweller’s commuting, is a key aspect of the urban sonic experience, and a rich source of inspiration for music that reflects on this, in a diaristic format here, Railton provides music which can feel simultaneously intimate and stark, like catching a stranger wince at the squeal of a passing train.

With the notion of commuting and endless motion of individuals introduced, the show moves on to elements of the pedestrian experience, with Adam Bohmann’s Brighton Pt 3. With a technique of self-narrating frequently used by Bohmann, he describes his surroundings while walking through Brighton before a gig. Bohmann’s delivery is candid and unaffected, his observations passing as train of thought. Following this are more voices, Nour Mobarak’s ‘Toothtone’ is constructed from conversations the artist paid members of the public to contribute via an open mic in Pershing Square, Los Angeles:

I would approach them with my big boom microphone and ask them if they would be willing to talk to me and let me record them for any amount of time up to one hour, for the modest fee of $20. I recorded 9 people this way. This composition was then separated into 16 channels, each channel piped out of speakers I built out of clear acrylic sheet and hung as invisibly as possible under 16 benches made by artist Nancy Lupo.

Mobarak composition of these voices feels at times like the organic din of voices in a crowded space, while intricately arranged elsewhere to remind the listener of the pathos of the piece, Toothtone emphasises another crucial element to the urban experience; the intimate and personal rendered anonymous via multitude and close quarters. Recordings like this can easily feel voyeuristic, and in responding to a city environment, serve as a reminder that a chorus of bodies contains an abundance of individuals. With this at times mundane intimacy explored, I chose to include a track of my own, taken from 2016’s ‘Assistance is Futile’, the track ‘Self-Service Serves Nothing’ is one of three tracks built around recordings made in Tesco Paul Street, Cork, from my phone in my pocket. From this basis I built a purposefully uneasy narrative through minimal and intense synthesised sound, the disjunction between my own gait while buying groceries and the overlaid sound emphasising the dull unease of the urban consumer.

The show finishes with excerpts from two tracks from Luciano Maggiore & Louie Rice’s ‘Three Things’; ‘Hissing for White Shoes (#6)’ and ‘Pocket Fascinator (#7)’. In ‘Hissing…’ Maggiore and Rice record themselves driving, with no sounds but that of the vehicle they are in and the occasional sound of both hissing any time they pass a pedestrian wearing white shoes. This playful and absurd track feels innately urban, a Fluxus-esque game that relies on the unwitting participation of anonymous passersby. The absurdity and humour in this also feel perfectly urban, where intensity and intimacy were explored elsewhere, ‘Hissing…’ is a reminder of a levity that is essential in the urban experience. As further levity, the final track, ‘Pocket Fascinator (#7)’, consists of recordings through a phone speaker of synthesisers in EMS studios, played back with the sound of Maggiore and Rice walking in attempted rhythm with the recordings. Reminiscent of the phenomenon of losing track of your own walking while keeping pace with music in headphones, the light-heartedness of this track feels like a fitting conclusion to a show that reflects on scoring the minutae of the urban experience.