Parsons School of Design
Transdisciplinary Design
Project Name: Sonic Apothecary for Synanthropes
Project Website: https://www.jiangnanhou.art/the-beaks
Sonic frictions exist between the many creatures that call the city home. For example, due to urban noise pollution, birds and insects are forced to modulate the frequencies of their calls just to be heard by one another. If practices like soundscape ecology use sound to monitor the health of ecosystems, what if sonic prescriptions could heal them? In this fictional history, we glimpse rival factions clashing on this question as they respond to the Resounder’s Sonic Apothecary that emits elixirs for the given ills of urban landscapes. By building this speculative world, we examine the global climate crisis and competing rhetorics of activist groups, government agencies, scientists, and international organizations, who each claim to speak the truth. As these parties pursue their agendas, whose voices are inevitably drowned out? This piece was created by The Sousrealists, a creative research collective – MariaEugenia Dominguez, Anjali Nair, Hannah Rose Fox, Miriam Young.
