Sound exhibit creates immersive experience

As students pass through Q-level of MSE Library they may have noticed the array of sounds emanating from a small silver speaker attached to the wall. These sounds, which range from energetic music to the buzzing of the natural world, are part of an exhibit titled You Are Hear, which will continue until March 31.

You Are Hear was created by juniors Raquel Serruya and Carlos Concepcion and sophomore Nina Krauss, who were encouraged by their professor Anand Pandian to turn a final project from their Ecological Anthropology class into a public exhibit. The original project was centered around exploring different aspects of the urban ecology of Baltimore from an environmental angle. Topics ranged from food deserts in the city to the Prettyboy Dam to the Hopkins bubble.

The group that focused on the sounds of Baltimore originally consisted of five group members, with each member recording a specific sound on their iPhone. The themes for the sounds chosen were broad terms like nature, transportation and music.

“We wanted sounds that would make the listener experience a day in the life of a Hopkins student,” Serruya wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “In fact, the original title of the work was A Day in the Life. We changed it when we made it into an exhibit.”

In order to make the exhibit specific to the Hopkins experience, the sounds chosen are those found in and around campus.

“We chose the sound of birds chirping in Wyman Park Dell, the sound of riding the JHMI, the protesters marching up North Charles St., the construction that was happening on the corner of St. Paul and 33rd and more that we considered defined a day in the life during April 2015,” Serruya wrote.

After the initial project, the members of the group met with Pandian for advice about how to best present the sounds and finalize what type of experience they wanted to create for listeners.

Pandian commented on the final result of the group’s work on the exhibit.

“I spent some time the other day sitting in Q-level and letting those sounds wash over me once again. I’m very impressed with what they’ve achieved,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Since the installation of the exhibit on March 7, Serruya has noticed students taking an interest in the sounds that echo throughout the area.

“We think that students are curious about the exhibit. We’ve noticed the curious expressions on our peers’ faces as they walk past the exhibit and pause for a few seconds to listen,” she wrote. “We’ve also seen students set up the tables under the sounds and we like to think it’s because they want to immerse themselves in the sounds as they do work.”

Ultimately, the curators of You Are Hear hope to generate a new type of experience for students and others who pass through or sit in on the exhibit.

“We wanted to create a soundscape where people could try to focus on their hearing instead of their sight.”

Pandian also noted the importance of the exhibit as a way of connecting with the elements of our city and our community that can often be forgotten.

“These sounds serve as a concrete reminder of the mood and feeling of an important time that has since passed,” he wrote. “These sounds also encourage us to attune ourselves more carefully to the neglected nuances and textures of where we live, and to find new ways of inhabiting a city like this one and learning to live more conscientiously with the many other beings.”