A Sound Map of the LA River
Nicholas Ginsburg (MFA Music)
Project Description
A Sound Map of the LA River charts the approximately 50 mile flow of the Los Angeles River through an immersive audiovisual experience. Using four-channel audio and mixed digital media, the viewer is emplaced in the diverse range of sound worlds composing Los Angeles.
Core questions
Context
More than 9 million people live in proximity of the Los Angeles River. The largely paved-over concrete
structure, long maligned and forgotten for its lack of ecological integration into the surrounding biodiversity of Southern California and perceived “ugliness”, has recently seen increased engagement and redevelopment interest
with the LA River Master Plan. A Sound Map of the LA River seeks to chart the over 50-mile flow of the oft-forgotten waterway through an immersive audiovisual experience. Ecological sound has a unique capacity to implicate and emplace us within environments, and thus holds worthy potential to communicate local manifestations of global environmental realities to a general public. As a nearly 54-mile waterway transversing massive sections of the City from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, it also gives an experiential snapshot into the sound worlds—and thus, material and cultural realities—that thread Los Angeles together.
Info
Sound Map of the LA River takes form as a 4-channel surround sound installation charting the variations of
sonic experience along its approximately 50-mile path through the City of Los Angeles. Every minute of the
looping ~50-minute installation corresponds with its requisite mileage along the River, starting deep in the San Fernando Valley and emptying into the ocean at Long Beach. Framing the speaker setup is a projection of video media intended to give visual manifestation to the variegated sound worlds that lie along the river, and a simple analog stopwatch that anchors the viewers’ journey downriver in perceptible scales of time and geography.
Nicholas Ginsburg (MFA Music)
Project Description
A Sound Map of the LA River charts the approximately 50 mile flow of the Los Angeles River through an immersive audiovisual experience. Using four-channel audio and mixed digital media, the viewer is emplaced in the diverse range of sound worlds composing Los Angeles.
Core questions
- What does the LA River and its surrounding areas, transversing nearly 54-miles of neighborhood from San Fernando to Long Beach, sound like?
-
What soundscapes, as expressions of material and culturaprocesses, thread together physical and imagined space in Los Angeles?
- Where do they diverge; where do these threads unravel?
Context
More than 9 million people live in proximity of the Los Angeles River. The largely paved-over concrete
structure, long maligned and forgotten for its lack of ecological integration into the surrounding biodiversity of Southern California and perceived “ugliness”, has recently seen increased engagement and redevelopment interest
with the LA River Master Plan. A Sound Map of the LA River seeks to chart the over 50-mile flow of the oft-forgotten waterway through an immersive audiovisual experience. Ecological sound has a unique capacity to implicate and emplace us within environments, and thus holds worthy potential to communicate local manifestations of global environmental realities to a general public. As a nearly 54-mile waterway transversing massive sections of the City from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, it also gives an experiential snapshot into the sound worlds—and thus, material and cultural realities—that thread Los Angeles together.
Info
Sound Map of the LA River takes form as a 4-channel surround sound installation charting the variations of
sonic experience along its approximately 50-mile path through the City of Los Angeles. Every minute of the
looping ~50-minute installation corresponds with its requisite mileage along the River, starting deep in the San Fernando Valley and emptying into the ocean at Long Beach. Framing the speaker setup is a projection of video media intended to give visual manifestation to the variegated sound worlds that lie along the river, and a simple analog stopwatch that anchors the viewers’ journey downriver in perceptible scales of time and geography.
