2009 is the centenary of publication of The Plan of Chicago. The Synesthetic Plan of Chicago is an art installation which is intended to correspond with the celebration of this historic event.
The (WLP) will provide a framework for participation in various field recording and listening projects over the course of the exhibit that reflect on Chicago’s natural, social, and cultural environment in the first years of the 21st century, 100 years after the 1909 Plan of Chicago. Concerned by degradation of the global environment, the WLP seeks to help people around the world “see” these global changes by experiencing them in a new way—through listening to the acoustic environment. This effort is a transdisciplinary one informed by the field of Acoustic Ecology: the study of the relationship between living organisms with their acoustic environment. The WLP is supported in this effort by the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) the regional chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology, the U.S. affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.
For the WLP will attempt to connect the experience of listening with the visual and tactile senses in the spirit of the original Plan of Chicago, “to anticipate the needs of the future as well as to provide for the necessities of the present.” The WLP uses field recordings and sound maps to make art that explores the acoustic environment, while blurring the line that separates this effort from the social and natural sciences. Rather than aestheticizing the soundscape the potential for making a change in the quality of life may be heard through the listening what and why life sounds the way it does. By plotting the locations where the acoustic horizon reaches its limits, where so-called “noise” reach their most unproductive levels, and by heightening public awareness of the aural architecture of Chicago, the possibility of going beyond “audio tourism” leads to the making of not only an aesthetically inventive and enjoyable multisensory experience, but results in a genuine article of social and historical significance as well. Then, a future Chicago may be conceived in the spirit of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, a plan fraught with hope and ambition.
The framework that the WLP will provide is consistent with its interest in informing and enabling the uninitiated to grasp the intangible phenomena of sound and listening. By elevating listening as a practice the WLP is suggesting that the visualist culture we live in has much to unlearn, or re-learn in order to “get with it” and compare to other “great” cities.
What follows are a number of proposals, some in the form of questions, other as overly ambitious ideas, that will be sorted out before the opening of the Synesthesic Plan of Chicago. These reflect the interests of the individual members of the WLP and its active collaborations (with Locus Sonus) in which the WLP will be helping people to start adding open web-mikes that stream real time audio on the Internet from local areas that are visibly marked on a map of the world. Visitors to website will be able listen to the real time audio streams through their web browser simply by clicking on the marked locations on the map.
General proposals for the Synesthesic Plan of Chicago include:
Could the MSAE collaborate with the Chicago Historical Society to somehow integrate the presentation of a Synesthesic Plan of Chicago with the Locustream Map?
Today the World Listening Project installs their contributing piece for the Synesthetic Plan of Chicago exhibition.
