What does a city sound like?
In this experiment, the landscape and city planning of New York City is used to generate its own soundscape.
Audio generation
The red line has 1600 points which is equal to the audio’s sampling rate (48khz) divided by the framerate (30fps) of the animation. The line is projected on the topology vertically and the resulting shape becomes the portion of the audio wave for each frame of the animation. The direction of the scanning process is intentionally parallel to the streets, to reveal Manhattan’s distinct grid layout through the output audio. The cross sections of the city become the texture of the sound, where the profile of Manhattan along its long side create the overall progression of the soundscape.
3D model sourced from Google Maps, using Earth Mesh HDA in Houdini.
