Jeffrey Jones & Benjamin Emerson
Art Statement
What do we hear everyday? What is the sound of our everyday lives? What are the unique sounds of a place, and how do we react to those sounds when taken out of their geographical context? So much of our lives we describe location using visual elements often ignoring an entire sense that greatly affects how we feel and think about a place.
Cambridge Cityscapes is a sound installation conceived by Ben Emerson and Jeff Jones in association with the Cambridge Arts Council. Loudspeakers placed along the Weeks Footbridge, reflect an aural journey through Cambridge on the MBTA red line. Each stop of the train begins a section of the piece which is a combination of soundscapes and spoken word from field recordings done in each area. Everything used as raw material was a sound native to Cambridge. The listener, strolling across the bridge, can experience the piece differently depending on where on the bridge they are.
Our goal was twofold: to record and catalog the sounds of life in Cambridge and the words of its residents and visitors, and also to explore the different moods, areas and atmospheres that make each part of Cambridge we visit unique.
As Sound Designers for theatre and media Ben Emerson and Jeff Jones spend much of the time listening for those defining sounds in order to recreate and represent different locations, themes and moods. In Cambridge Cityscapes, we hope the words and sounds collected and presented will open the listeners ears to the people and places that surround them everyday.