The Delhi
Polyphones
The paraphonic and polyphonic stays
and hums of the city.
Last imprints of the city’s contribution
to the spheres of sounds looming,
gently-surrounding it.
First Preview-
Audioblast Festival 23 http://apo33.org/
Nantes, France
Supported by 421 Arts Campus, Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi.
Project Coordinators - Mays Albaik and Aya Afaneh
Curator - Sara Bin Safwan
Interlocutor - Makrand Sanon
Are there sounds we desensitize of our city?
Hammers we hear, trains, planes and traffic and industries,
surviving lakes with breathless fountains, birds on trees forced to
stand in a line, addresses and approvals- we hear.
Are we missing to hear an integrity, a plead, of the city?
Where do voices of the city find unhindered composition or a state of non composement
encompassing all its dweller’s little shenanigans?
Do we hear the sound within the sound of the city?
What sound of the city our dried-out speeches must compress?
Where must the prayers hide in the sound of the city so that clouds could reach them and water?
An undertone of the city? An overtone? A polyphone?
Millions of them in a cosmic float?
Aural Auroras of the city reach out to the skies in feebler, nobler intonations and gestures.
Delhi Polyphone will be a series of multichannel (16) compositions composed solely with Delhi’s undertones, overtones, and many other polyphones. After recording sound-scapes from around Delhi, including tombs, railway stations and tracks, lakes, atmospheric virtual tones, parks, industrial areas, bridges, underpasses, universities, and ultrasonic environments – we'd synthesize. Using largely a wide variety of inverse notch filters we'd pick out strands of tones which go by unheard. Strands from the multidimensional structure of a polyphonic environment, which can be decomposed into an infinite number of harmonics.
These strands give us hints into the metaphysics and a larger resonance of the city. A resonance which comes together in the form of virtual tones – tones made by the interaction of all elements of Delhi interacting with each other, like a sonic decentralized atmosphere. . Aural Auroras of an everyday dystopian city.
Harmonic series
Percieved tone/wave
Percieved tone with it's polyphonic voices/ overtones
Raw recordings would comprise of
Omnidirectional soundscapes – industries, parks, monuments, bridges, etc.
Dronescapes – to capture virtual atmospheric tones
Hydroscapes – the few surviving lakes of Delhi
FREQUENCY FILTERING
In order to bring out the upper and more atmospheric harmonies of the soundscape usually suppressed due to the loudness of fundamental tones we are making use of inverse digital notch filter devices, with very sharp resonances.
Usually in audio processing, notch filters are used to remove a single frequency or a narrow band of frequencies. Here we are aiming at the opposite by heightening narrow bands – overtones, undertones, and polyphonic remains of the city via inverse notch filters with high Q (quality factor) usually up to10. A Q of 1 is equivalent to a bandwidth of 1.38 octaves, while a Q of 6 is equivalent to 0.25 octaves. While isolating tones we are working with overtones from 1 kHz to 20 kHz, and undertones ranging from 60 hz to 20 hz.
Inverse notch filter
notch filter