The objective is to design a series of souvenir objects about a certain place, and shown them in a unique, but still universal way — in order to encapsulate memories. So I, of course, decided to choose New York as the place, and the soundscape, as the memoir. In New York, there are two kinds of noise: the sounds of the city (car horns, loud neighbors, construction equipment, barking dogs) and the sound of New Yorkers (complaining about it). There are more than 140,000 noise-related complaints every year. That means, there is one complaint every four minutes, day in and day out, all year.
Quintessential NYC: a jumble of different noises.
The concept would be a series of cassette tapes of different soundscapes in NYC. The ‘title’ for each tape would be a distinctive scenario, each purposely made to be funny, as a mockery to the level of noise the city produces each year. Using a audio waveform visualizer, I developed 5 different waveform for each specific scenario and use it as a graphic symbol.
