Sonic City
The Pretenders song My City Was Gone is about the hollowing out of the Rust Belt in the 1980s, largely the result of Reaganomics. But imagine if ambient music (not generic artless Muzak) filled the air over hundreds of miles like a sonic microclimate, from Seneca County to Cuyahoga Falls. Chrissie Hynde's uses the word "Muzak" pejoratively, but "keynotes" (constant pitched elements in a space) can be useful: The outer isobels can define the circumference of a town and/or tribal boundaries. In medieval times, the town limits are where the church bells begin to be audible with normal hearing.
Civil Defense sirens create this kind of atmosphere, albeit briefly on Tuesdays at 10:30 AM. Most people find them creepy, but the pure soft intervals are actually beautiful and can have the same function as church bells.
Brian Eno also had a similar idea about sounds defining places based on proximity: There are loud sounds happening, but you're not in the "sound box" (like a "watch box" for severe weather warnings) to be affected by them.
"When you sit outside and listen, you hear some things loud 'cause you're close to them. It's just an accident. It's not because they're more important. But if you listen, you hear things that you know are actually loud but they're just on the edge of your earshot. I wanted to make a music that placed you in a field of sound and implied that the horizon wasn't the end of it, that it continued right around the edge, right around the globe. Music that puts you in context." (Music for Earthquakes - 1989)
Some other isometrics:
Isotachs (lines of constant wind speed)
Isogons (lines of constant magnetic variation--what birds may use)
Isogloss (geographic boundary of a language)
Brian Eno also had a similar idea about sounds defining places based on proximity: There are loud sounds happening, but you're not in the "sound box" (like a "watch box" for severe weather warnings) to be affected by them.
"When you sit outside and listen, you hear some things loud 'cause you're close to them. It's just an accident. It's not because they're more important. But if you listen, you hear things that you know are actually loud but they're just on the edge of your earshot. I wanted to make a music that placed you in a field of sound and implied that the horizon wasn't the end of it, that it continued right around the edge, right around the globe. Music that puts you in context." (Music for Earthquakes - 1989)
Some other isometrics:
Isotachs (lines of constant wind speed)
Isogons (lines of constant magnetic variation--what birds may use)
Isogloss (geographic boundary of a language)
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