I set this experiment up at first because I thought it was so odd to see the sign, UNNECESARY NOISE PROHIBITED in the middle of Manhattan. Similar signs pepper the city but they're more directed at unncessary honking, and this sign is explicitly more directed at all noise. This sparked a curiosity in me so I set up the small intervention. Within minutes, residents of the adjacent apartment building were on the street, in my face, yelling. They were in fact yelling louder than the noise that my little toys were making. The doorman emerged and demanded that I, "Turn off the monkey," or he'd be calling the police. Really? I asked. And then what would happen? You'd get a citation, was his response. And this is when the deeper aspects of this project really hit me. I had, with unintentionally irritating intentions, invaded this person's space. (I'd like to be considered as having had playful intentions.) I had placed a bit-o-sound-graffiti, if you will, directly in their home, in their mind, and they wanted it removed, now. In-the-moment-graffiti-removal. At what point does something like this become censorship? Clearly, my example is small and playfully abstract from something that would be considered censorship, but the analogy could be....sound?

It's no mystery that sound permeates space, and sound has often been used for multitudes of space invading techniques. Beyond a giant boombox or a busking guitar player, has sound been used as unsanctioned public art very much? I don't know. When people protest, their shouting permeates the walls of the place they're protesting in front of. Also, we're constantly bombarded with aural advertising, can't.....stop it.......from entering..............my mind! And, aside from a few famous public sound pieces in sanctioned spaces, of which I do know a few, I'd be curious to see more examples of cleverly placed sound graffiti. (late September, 2008)

SOUND REBELLION
NYC

tron