s p e c i a l s e c t i o n
Reflections on the Sonic Commons
O+A (Bruce Odland
and Sam Auinger)
Noi, Odland and Auinger, are sonic thinkers.
We trust our ears, not our eyes. We observe the world from
a hearing perspective (Fig. 1). Although this text is a visual
medium, it chronicles a sonic journey of personal experience.
As we made sound installations in public spaces, we learned
about our culture by listening not only to the sounds it is proud
of—the music, the signal tones, the vast charged hum of the
economy—but also to the unintended hums and buzzes, IL
energy lost as sound vibrations as we burn fossil fuels and turn
them into every aspect of modern life.
The overwhelmingly visual nature of our economy and cul-
ture is undeniable. Tuttavia, we have felt the need to immu-
nize ourselves against visuals as a source of truth because of
their overwhelming repetition and unquestioning marriage
to the economy.
Let us begin the story at a moment of discovery.
Rome, 1991: Resonant HaRmonics and
How tHey affect angRy woRkeRs
In 1991 the brilliant solar artist Peter Erskine invited us to work
with him at Trajan’s Forum in Rome. His Secrets of the Sun re-
illuminated the ancient architecture with a beam of sunlight
Bruce Odland, 79 Old Post Road, Croton-on-Hudson, New York, NY 10520, U.S.A. E-mail:
Sam Auinger, Erich Weinerstr. 21, D-10439 Berlin, Germany. E-mail:
Fig. 1. odland and auinger making a
4Ears recording of the sonic commons
in a back alley of the jewelry district of
seoul, Korea, 2007. (photo © bruce
odland)
a b s t r a c t
casting saturated rainbows on the
timeworn surfaces. Challenged to
action by this beauty, we started lis-
tening to the Forum, a combination
of shopping mall and seat of govern-
ment with all the grandeur of both.
The problem was that the gran-
deur had become purely visual. IL
vast atrium had been built for a dif-
ferent sound environment, a slave-
powered Rome. In fossil-fueled
Rome, the ancient arch had be-
come a band shell for Vespas, cars,
trucks, buses, horns and sirens on
the passing thoroughfare, amplify-
ing them and projecting them into
the center of the forum. It was a devastating mess, creating
major cognitive dissonance between the eye and ear. We either
had to come up with a feel-good aerosol sound spray or learn
to use our given modern soundscape—traffic.
scale public sound installations
that transform city noise into
spaces that encourage connec-
tion to our environment and our
community through hearing.
The authors discuss their large-
In the upper galleries on the second floor of the market, we
made a lucky find. Stacked by the hundreds were amphorae,
the large ceramic vases used as shipping containers by ancient
Rome. What follows must be considered in context. Noi, O+A,
listen to everything. Everything. It is not unusual for one of
us to drop a microphone into a river, a sugar bowl, onto a
steel tension wire, a tunnel under the city of Salzburg or the
©2009 ISAST
LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 19, pag. 63–68, 2009 63
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Fig. 2. amphora resonating to traffic at trajan’s Forum in rome, 1992. (photo © Mary-ann Greanier)
focal point of a huge parabolic city in
Southwestern Colorado. Thus dropping
a microphone into an amphora and lis-
tening on headphones was not accompa-
nied by the expectation of a huge reward.
Imagine our astonishment to hear a “hal-
lelujah” moment, with the sound of hun-
dreds of church bells swirling in a very
manipulated and processed sound-effect
spazio, jaw dropping, profound, deeply
mystifying and very real.
We had stumbled on a simple fact of
physics. When bombarded by the sound-
pressure levels of modern traffic, IL
amphora from ancient Rome was func-
tioning like a harmonic resonator. It was
selecting those parts of the sound vibra-
tions coming from buses and Vespas,
horns, voices and sirens that matched
its dimensions and re-resonating them
into a pool of beautiful melodies and
harmonies. It was, Infatti, a huge Helm-
holtz resonator (a closed airspace with an
open hole that, because of its volume and
the size of the opening, resonates to spe-
cific frequencies in reaction to broader
sound vibrations outside, like the gourds
on a marimba, or a plastic bottle when
you blow across the top) changing traffic
noise into music (Fig. 2).
The rest was relatively simple. We se-
lected amphorae with compatible har-
monies, put microphones inside and
amplified them from solar-powered para-
bolic speakers located at architectural fo-
cal points. We bounced the tuned beam
off the architecture to alter the forum’s
soundscape.
We will always remember the moment
of our first test. Ours was but one part
of a very large exhibition, with workers
from all around the world. Frequent ar-
guments were taking place in many lan-
guages and morale was low. We hooked
up the tuned beam of sound. Within 10
minutes the arguing had stopped. IL
harmony from the inside of the amphora
seemed to spread out to fill the architec-
tural space and alter people’s moods.
Smiles soon accompanied light steps. Noi
could not believe it. So we unplugged the
device and waited. Arguments restarted
almost immediately. We plugged it in
Ancora, they stopped. We left it running,
named it Traffic Mantra and pledged that
we would work more with this strange
phenomenon.
sonic commons 1
The Sonic Commons can be defined
as any space where many people share
an acoustic environment and can hear
the results of each other’s activities,
both intentional and unintentional.
For instance, at any small-scale outdoor
sporting game, the players, the fans, IL
nearby road with its unaware drivers and
the passing jet are all part of the Sonic
Commons. Just as we share the air we
respirare, we are submerged in a sea of
shared sound. We are all connected by
the vibrations we make as we use energy
in daily life. Because sound does not
stop at visual or economic boundaries,
the Sonic Commons encompasses both
private and public space. An expensive
private vehicle may sound quiet on the
inside. Heard from the outside by a pe-
destrian in public space, it is just as loud
as a cheap car. The individual gesture
unintentionally influences the emotional
atmosphere of the Sonic Commons.
The Sonic Commons is always chang-
ing shape and dimensions. Some defin-
ing sounds are constant, like the power
grid, or seasonal, like the neighbor’s air
conditioning or migrating birds. Some,
like rush hour and train whistles, fol-
low the logic of the economy. The Sonic
Commons is a complex multi-user envi-
ronment leaving an accidental sound-
scape as a by-product.
HaRmonic BRidge, 1998:
making tHe sonic
commons moRe Humane
A new and brave experiment in revitaliz-
ing a broken economy with art was taking
place in North Adams, Massachusetts, In
the late 1990s, and we were called upon
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sonic commons 2
The Sonic Commons is full of asymmetry.
Picture the tycoon making the helicopter
commute from city to suburb, buried in
noise-canceling headphones listening to
Beethoven, oblivious that he overflies a
veterans’ hospital with a high-decibel ro-
tor wash straight out of the sound track
from Apocalypse Now.
The Sonic Commons is deeply af-
fected by architecture that shapes the di-
mensions of all the sounds that bounce
around in our cities until they are ab-
sorbed. Giant planes of glass and steel
amplify and reflect the sounds of our
fossil-fueled toys, making a harsh and
disorienting offer to our ears. The vari-
ous forms of architecture are a record of
economic and political power, of materi-
als previously extracted, fabricated and
constructed. This three-dimensional city
landscape functions as a sounding box
for a different form of power—the roar of
the modern city. The Sonic Commons is
a moment-to-moment four-dimensional
readout of the sound energy being used
now, resonated and shaped by the archi-
tectural forms of energy past.
It is curious that humans, who hear
almost as well as dolphins, have spent so
little effort to decode this waveform, A
seek its meaning, to delve into its infor-
mation-rich secrets. In contrasto, a great
deal of effort has been spent in escape,
denial, avoidance and replacement; IL
final result is a growing isolation. In an
attempt to blot out the rising noise level,
we plug up our marvelous hunter-gath-
erer hearing system with a commercial
industrial application, the iPod.
HIVE MUSIC, 1997: HeaRing
tHe city as a sympHony
After working with the tuning of various
cities in real time, we began to listen to
cities in a new way—informationally, criti-
cally, musically; to hear new patterns and
understand relationships between space,
architecture, harmony, noise, human ac-
tivity and social usages of public space.
After hearing the harmony at the instal-
lation in real time, we continued to hear
it when we walked away into the untuned
città. The filters in our brain that tirelessly
suppress the sounds around us found a
new setting. We got control of the invis-
ible knobs and could now use our ears to
decode the city with or without the tun-
ing tubes. The same phenomenon hap-
pened to our crews and visitors to our
installations.
Così, we took on the challenge of mak-
ing a concert to bring this city symphony
to new ears. The concert was to be made
entirely of resonances and images taken
from the city in real time, using the city as
our oscillating, throbbing sound source,
which we surfed in the instant with digital
filtering. We originally named the con-
cert Cloud Chamber, because the charged
particles of energy that make up our city
could for a brief moment leave audible
and visible traces in our ears and retinas.
The Kitchen performance space in New
York City became the site of an ongoing
sonic soiree, with guest guitarist Jimmi
Harry playing a raga over the West Side
Highway (tuned to the key of A) and DJ
Spooky fragmenting recorded history
over a Wagnerian climax of emergency
sirens on 10th Avenue (in the key of E)
while a gravel-voiced street volunteer
sang about “American Blood.” Video art-
ist Chris Kondek scanned the streets with
cameras mounted in the tuning tubes,
mixing a surveillance epic in real time
on multiple screens. It became evident
that we were all in a resonating chamber
tuned to the gestures of the economy: IL
rush hours, the traffic lights, the trucks
transporting everything New York would
sell in the morning (Fig. 4). In definitiva,
we decided to call it HIVE MUSIC be-
Fig. 3. bruce odland, diagram of Harmonic Bridge, Mass Moca, 1999. (Diagram © bruce
odland) two 16-ft “tuning tubes” create harmonic series from the noise of traffic on
Highway 2 overpass in north adams, Mamma, with two “cube” loudspeakers activating unused
“Gothic acoustics” below the viaduct in real time.
to play a role in shaping the sonic atmo-
sphere. The Massachusetts Museum of
Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) was at-
tempting to build a large modern art mu-
seum in an abandoned electronics factory.
There was, Tuttavia, some alienation be-
tween the townspeople and the museum
campus, exacerbated by the Highway 2
overpass that physically divided them.
The overpass might be considered an
eyesore, a no-man’s land of cement and
traffic noise. To get from Main Street to
the museum, a pedestrian had to pass
underneath the viaduct and be bom-
barded by a shower of grey noise. To us
this seemed like the perfect site for an
urban transformation.
Since working in Rome, we had de-
veloped some interesting tools for just
this sort of thing. Amphorae being in
short supply in America, we were now
working with “tuning tubes.” Using a 16-
foot length of aluminum tubing with a
microphone placed at a harmonic node,
we were able to generate a living over-
tone series in the key of C in response to
the sounds of cars, trucks, motorcycles
and pedestrians. As if a didgeridoo were
being played by the passing traffic, IL
chaos of noise is reduced to the harmonic
proportions of the resonating tube. UN
bus activates the lowest harmonic, a car
the middle and motorcycles bring out
higher harmonies. We installed one on
each end of the bridge (Fig. 3). Beneath
the bridge, we installed two specially de-
signed “cube” speakers. The square ce-
ment cube with a flush mounted speaker
beneath creates a hemispheric zone of
sound that is in phase, couples with the
architectural space gently and is imper-
vious to weather. These mini-monoliths
played back the harmonies of traffic
passing overhead in real time. They ac-
tivated the Gothic cathedral acoustics
unintentionally formed by the overpass
designers and invited pedestrians to en-
joy the summer shade with the sound of
North Adams resonating in “stereo” in
the key of C. A blighted urban space was
reclaimed as a harmonious passageway
between town and museum.
MASS MoCA director Joe Thompson
tells it best:
The overpass is still just as imposing as
ever—a landmark of urban renewal run
amok—but what was once a harsh bar-
rier between the museum and the town
has been softened by Sam and Bruce’s
wonderful piece of sonic jujitsu. IL
speakers, encased in an elegantly crafted
concrete block imprinted with tire treads,
now boast a fine sheen, their tops worn
slick by the thousands of people who
have used them for benches, hanging
fuori, literally feeling the music by the seat
of their pants.
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O+A, Reflections on the Sonic Commons 65
Fig. 4. performance of Cloud Chamber at the Kitchen, 1997. bruce odland with “planet speaker.” (photo © anja Hinricksen)
cause for the first time we understood the
swarming sounds of the city—we heard
the music of the human hive.
sonic commons 3
We all live in shared sound space whether
we like it or not. It is as ubiquitous as the
air we breathe. It is a shifting space with
no fixed boundaries. Sound permeates
the space, vibrates through the windows
and walls; the subway vibrates the foun-
dation of the urban cathedral, comes
through the grating in the street. It is a
never-ending story of how we use power
and how the byproducts of that power
reach us through space, resonating and
coloring that space in ways we rarely no-
tice or discuss. We do not have the lan-
guage. The process is so subliminal that
the language will have to be invented.
Let’s begin.
BlUE Moon, 2004:
Re-sensitizing tHe eaRs of
new yoRkeRs to tHe moon
and tides
The concept was simple. Harmonize
the plaza with three different lengths of
tuning tube responding to the harbor
soundscape, with the moon and tides
controlling the sound mix. By hearing
the longest tube’s harmonies at low tide,
the medium at middle tide and the short
at high tide through a string of five blue
cube speakers, visitors could reconnect
to the sound environment around them
and the patterns of the tides (Fig. 5).
The building process in this case was
much more complex and involved ne-
gotiating a gaggle of committees, mul-
tiple security zones and public-space
taboos. Electronics wizard Roland Babl
had to design a tide-to-MIDI converter
for us so that our electronics could read
the water levels. Our technical director,
Bill Ballou, had to safely and legally rig
tuning tubes in shock cages in order for
them to withstand boats and waves. In
the end, Tuttavia, it all came down to
listening.
The plaza seemed quiet at first, pro-
tected from traffic by massive towers of
glass and steel. Tuttavia, the shelter from
traffic allowed all the standing waves from
ventilation systems, power grid, genera-
tori, air traffic and harbor sounds to be
heard. Late one night, while tuning the
installation, we heard the tuning tubes
playing a minimalist epic. It turned out to
be the power grids of New York and New
Jersey beating out of phase with each
other across the Hudson in the middle
of the night.
The real story here is how altering
the sound of a space changed the emo-
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tional environment, the social “game,"
the perception of the architecture and
the way people related to their surround-
ing. They slowed down, immersed in a
harmonic version of the reality around
them, entered a musical version of the
world and relaxed. The low tones of the
ferries arrived minutes before the visuals,
the daily rhythm of tides and helicopters
was revealed, a loop with nature emerged
even on that artificial landscape.
sonic commons 4
By labeling our shared soundspace the
Sonic Commons, we are reminding our-
selves that certain things like air, water
and humane sonic environments should
be considered basic human rights. No
one, for instance, would promote put-
ting a library in the same soundspace as
a boiler factory. Tuttavia, slightly more
subtle things happen all the time: IL
“healthy” juice bar environment mixes
fresh juice with the industrial-grade noise
of blenders, juicers and refrigeration
compressors that steal the very feeling
they promote; the Museum of Modern
Art sculpture garden in New York City is
a temple to sculpture but is bombarded
by street noise like any taxi stand; the el-
ementary school is by the superhighway;
the pedestrian path is squeezed between
two highways; eccetera. In our culture, the mi-
raculous hunter-gatherer sense of hear-
ing is constantly sacrificed on the visual
altar. Tuttavia, deafness is not the same
as evolution. Back in the 1970s McLuhan
wrote an article observing that when the
senses are out of balance, it is a classic
sign of insanity. Has our culture gone vi-
sually insane?
Questo, Poi, is a plea that comes from
years of working in public space making
art for the sense of hearing for people
who are bombarded by the thoughtless
industrial sound design that we, as urban
dwellers, have accepted as inevitable. È
non. All infrastructure is designed. Nostro
ears were simply not part of the design
brief. Now that we hear the results of this
oversight, we are encouraging study, dis-
cussion and revision. Part of what makes
us human is the whisper, the gentle soft
murmur, the ability to form complex
thoughts in contemplative space, IL
ability to connect to our environment
and our community through our hear-
ing. We need to consider what type of
offer our Sonic Commons is making
to us and strive to make that offer hu-
mane. We are not advocating quiet for
quiet’s sake; we are advocating humane
design that takes into account how we
perceive and interact with the world.
For if we are forced out of self-defense
Fig. 5. Five “cube” speakers play back real-time tuned Harbor soundscape at the World Financial center plaza, 2004. (photo/illustration ©
bruce odland)
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O+A, Reflections on the Sonic Commons 67
by the industrial soundscape to go deaf
to the world around us, what all have we
sacrificed?
bibliography and Discography
Garten der ZeiTraeume, CD, swap, 1990.
Garten der ZeiTraeume, catalogue, Landesmuseum
O.Ö., 1990.
S.O.S. Secrets of the Sun: Solar artwork by Peter Erskin,
sound installation Lost Neighborhood by O+A, catalogue,
Haus der Kulturen der Eelt, Berlin, 1993.
Resonance, CD, swap, 1995.
Sounds from the Vaults, CD, 30/70, 2000.
Box 30/70, CD, Tourette, 2001.
Box 30/70, catalogue, Siemens Kulturstiftung, 2001.
Sam Auinger and Friends, A Hearing Perspective: Re-
quiem for Fossil Fuels, CD, swap, 2007.
Sam Auinger and Friends, A Hearing Perspective: 0-form
(2000), Living Harmonies (2006), DVD, swap, 2007.
Sam Auinger and Friends, A Hearing Perspective: book
3, catalogue, Folio Verlag Wien-Bozen, 2007.
The Art of Listening, book (incl. CD), Insa Art Space,
Arts Council Korea, 2007.
permanent installations
Harmonic Bridge, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA,
1997–present.
Tonic, West Hollywood, CA, N. San Vincente and
Santa Monica Boulevard, 2002–present.
Box 30/70, Klankenbos Musicadommelhof, Neerpelt,
Belgium, 2005–present.
Manuscript received 2 Gennaio 2009.
O+A are currently working on a new type of
piece called 4 Ears, which allows them to docu-
ment the Sonic Commons at a particular loca-
tion and time and then play it back in gallery
space with startling detail and dimensionality.
It will also be released as the DVD The Sonic
Commons.
68 O+A, Reflections on the Sonic Commons
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