NYC: Infrastructure Harmonics 1992

Grand Central Terminal Recordings

After working in Rome, we wanted to explore the possibilities of another richly noisy city, New York.  Challenged by John Hanhardt of the Whitney Museum to find the metaphor for Amphora in the United States, we decided to study New York's transportation hub,  Grand Central Station.  We became obsessed with the theory that there was a standing wave produced by trains, traffic, ventilation fans, electrical hums, lighting, and air conditioning that was producing a harmonic series and that the terminal itself with its giant vaulted ceiling was, like the amphora in Rome, resonating.

Why could we not hear this?  The theory is that a single set of ears is unable to hear this chord, the scale of the sound being too large to perceive.  The waves are too long and the physical distances between harmonics too great.  So we synchronized two DAT (digital audio tape) recorders in the center of the hall, being, then, separated in space but not in time.  Bruce walked the path of the commuters going to the trains and back while Sam stayed in the center of the terminal.  Later, when we synchronized these recordings and listened as if with four ears and two perspectives at once, the resonating chord immediately appeared.  This chord is comprised of train motors at the fundamental resonated down the long underground tubes joining the main terminal, air-conditioning resonated at the fifth, fans at the octave, with a sub-harmonic produced by the giant ventilation fans on the roof.  Remove either of the two channels and the chord disappeared again.  Grand Central Terminal is like a huge resonating instrument which plays  a shifting harmonic structure an audio read-out of NYC's transportation hub.