(Breathing, traffic, birds, voices, coughing, breathing, rain, shouting, a motorbike, breathing, footsteps, wind, beeping, breathing)

What does the Anthropocene sound like? What sensations are triggered by the polyphony that London confronts us with? How can we hear London differently?

Derived from the sonic environment I inhabit, 1 November 2022 tackles these questions by proposing an alternative audible experience. Highlighting, and deftly distorting certain fragments of London’s soundscape, the project provokes the listener to (re)consider the sounds of the Anthropocene and its effect on the body.

I recorded my sonic environment on 1 November 2022 using a Zoom H2n Audio Recorder. Wandering the streets of south west London, I captured sounds from afar and up close, at varying amplitudes and frequencies and passing velocities. The rumble of a plane overhead, my own asthmatic wheezing. In order to do so, I set the recorder’s input sensitivity to high, allowing me to capture the largest range and quantity of sounds at high fidelity. I then used Adobe Audition to manipulate the sounds recorded, carefully isolating fragments from the large library I had compiled. Adjusting, distorting and layering the four levels of each input channel, I created a new sonic environment – one that recalls that of London but in a more subjective, and potentially overwhelming, form.

The project is presented experientially. Each track in the piece is isolated and plays from a different speaker positioned at irregular intervals around the room. Five tracks from five speakers – some play on loop, some subtly shift in audible texture and volume. It is intended for the audience to sit on chairs amid these sounds, unaware of where or what they will hear next.

Mesmeric, phantasmagoric, the project is composed of familiar sounds that are subverted to trigger new and different psychoacoustic effects – a sonic environment that critically engages with the Anthropocene.