- John Cage, 1937
I've been thinking a lot about noise and sound, both auditory and visual. Noise is objectionable, unpleasant, erratic, incidental, or unwelcome; even when it's communicating important or useful information, it falls somewhere between blandly functional and outright objectionable. The reversing alarm on a truck and prolific social control signs are important but obnoxious; visual clutter and auditory cacophony is a fact of life in the city.
And yet Manhattan sounds distinctly different from downtown Toronto, where I live; the subways in New York and Toronto use similar fonts but their graphic designs look completely different. The incidental and accidental arrangements that inundate us can be as fascinating as a work of art, even though they are so overwhelmingly present and unpleasant that we generally ignore them.
My coping method, and my approach to enjoying and valuing this noise, is to impose isolation and control. Recording something and removing it from its surroundings lends itself to more detailed examination, and that lays the groundwork for appreciation. Listening to sounds from the inside of a subway train as a contemplative exercise, while comfortable and at home, is very different from being subjected to it during a daily commute. A sign that says what is or is not permitted is irrelevant until it applies to us, at which point it's typically a frustration, but with a camera it can be tamed and examined at length. And that, ultimately, is what I enjoy: being able to examine and find value in my surroundings.
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