“Urban Intonation” by Brian House
Title:
- Urban Intonation
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Medium:
- Ultrasonic recording project and installation
Artist Statement:
This installation is part of the ongoing ultrasonic recording project and installation series Urban Intonation, which explores human-murine relationships. To my knowledge, these are the first ultrasonic recordings made of “wild” rats in New York City, and reveal surprising things about the use of the acoustic spectrum by animals in cities. Living under the paving stones, consuming our refuse, and incubating our diseases, the city rat is a ubiquitous part of global, urban capitalism. The revulsion rats inspire actually speaks of our closeness to them— neither domesticated nor “wild,” rattus norvegicus belies the notion that we are separate from nature. And just as we continually negotiate our place in a dynamic city, so have rats developed elaborate social codes intertwined with urban architecture and geography. We are not usually privy to the vocal address of one rat to another, however, as they primarily speak above the (20khz) threshold of human hearing. But for Urban Intonation, I recorded rats at multiple sites in NYC with a custom ultrasonic microphone that I left in their burrows for 24-hour periods. I then pitch-shifted the result into the human auditory range and mixed it for multi-channel playback over a human public address system, repositioning rat sound as something that is recognizable, if not intelligible, as speech. In addition, this project has revealed that rats adapt to niches in the acoustic frequency spectrum created by human and mechanical noise in the city.
