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A Relief from the Noise

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Posted on September 13, 2002

The Sonic Memorial Project

September is usually the time when the major television networks trot out their fresh crop of sitcoms, soaps and survivor shows. This year, however, we're seeing a new, grotesque form of the fall line up. The nation's major broadcasters have created a din of heavily sponsored news items, retrospectives and docudramas all in attempt to memorialize (or perhaps capitalize on) the World Trade Center disaster. A whole month of programming is planned and all of this will probably continue to be recycled well into 2003. And it's not just television. 9/11 coffee table books dominate every bookstore window and commercial radio only adds to the noise.

Photo by Charles H. Traub From the collection of photographs Here is New York Image from the Fontline of History: A Democracy of Photographs www.hereisnewyork.org

To memorialize is one thing, to sell memorializing is another. The memory of the event itself is fading, and mainstream media is replacing it with a self -promoting parade of images. Many of us who were deeply disturbed by what has happened to us are looking for a more intimate way of remembering—one that is free from the filters of producers, sponsors and solemn anchors.

The Sonic Memorial Project produced byPicture Projects may be the best alternative form of remembrance out there.

"The Sonic Memorial Project " differs from major media accounts of 9/11 by offering multiple first-person perspectives. Sonicmemorial.org grew out of a collaboration started by the Kitchen Sisters and NPR, to produce a radio series about the World Trade Center. It is, as its title would suggest, a memorial comprised solely of sound. And in this blitz of visually driven media, it is a relief. Alison Cornyn, one of the founders of Picture Projects, explains, "even though it [9/11] is a widely covered story, it will never be able to get every voice, every angle. What 'Here is New York' did for photos, Sonic Memorial will try to do for audio, and it's only possible now because of where we are in digital culture; the fact that people can record so easily and the material can be digitized so easily." Her partner Sue Johnson adds, "We are not so saturated with the vocabulary of sound. It is so individualistic." It is an ambitious work that has pushed Picture Projects to explore the boundaries of the web and develop a new way of incorporating interactivity into storytelling.

Sonic Browser

Shortly after September 11, 2001, the Kitchen Sisters, producers of the radio series, Lost and Found Sound, established through NPR, a Sonic Memorial voice mail phone line. They urged listeners to call and contribute sounds related to or recorded in, the World Trade Center. People called and left messages, told of wedding videos, ambient recordings, and musical events, all of which they wanted to donate. The creators sought to build a kind of aural sculpture of the life that flourished in and around the towers. Picture Projects approached the Kitchen Sisters with an idea for a web site. But this was not to be ancillary to a radio series. This was to be a stand-alone memorial that would have its own life on and meaning in the open framework of the Web.

The Shape of the Memorial

The Sonic Memorial includes several elements. Central to the site is the "ARCHIVE", which houses a database containing almost all of the 700 sounds contributed so far and a search engine with a variety of parameters that allow people to explore the memorial thematically. In STORIES users can listen to the NPR radio segments radio segments. In an effort to create a nationwide dialogue in schools, Picture Projects created FOR EDUCATORS, an outreach and toolkit program for teachers. The ADD A SOUND function allows the visitor to upload any sound in any format. But the real achievement of sonicmemorial.org is the SONIC BROWSER.

Visually, the browser is a simple window, looking into blue space. There is an ambient bed of sound that plays softly. From time to time, simple vertical lines drift across the screen, sometimes followed by others, sometimes crossing each other. As the visitor brings the mouse to a line, it bows slightly, and tightens again, as if the visitor has plucked it somehow. Leave the mouse there, and the line turns orange and begins to wave and curve, like a dancing sound wave and random sound files begin to play. Some of the sounds are:

an interview with an engineer about the Towers;
a voicemail from a man who loved to watch the sun reflect off the Towers when he hiked;
a song made up of sound bites from news coverage;
a hysterical policeman on a scanner running from the collapsing second tower;
Tom Geltin, of NPR, broadcasting from the Pentagon. He is unaware that a plane crashed into the other side of the building, and unsure why alarms are sounding;
an interview with a worker at Fresh Kills responsible for searching the debris for evidence and remains;
a message from a woman who wails into the phone;
a woman's set of voicemails as she looks for her boyfriend, ends simply with "I love you".

Move the mouse off the line and the line drifts off, the sound slowly fades into the bed underneath. Each visit loads a different set of random sounds onto the browser.

Group of Mohawk ironworkers on the World Trade Center. Early 1970s. Photos courtesy of Peter "Doc" Alfred.

It is a gorgeous piece of work. The effect is that visitors compose the experience as they roll across the screen. Each time one visits, a different, random set of files loads onto the browser; each visit is unique. The cumulative effect of sounds and animation is at once dream-like, and weirdly graphic. The piece grows in power, as different voices blend together, talking about everything from the profound to the banal. It is an enormous chorus.

For Picture Projects, it is the logical, albeit exhausting, next step. As Sue Johnson says, "It's the fusion of all our work. It's bigger than anything we've done. But the technology is there now. We have the ability to make a town square-a collecting point-that doesn't exist in some geographic location."

Like a Cubist painting, there are dozens of angles of perception.

It seems right that within the intangible space of the Internet, the Sonic Memorial seeks to make something tangible of the World Trade Center. Picture Projects is using sounds and recorded stories to try to construct a memory out of a physical space that no longer exists. Any good memorial says something about the people who created it, and the time in which they lived. Johnson notes, however, that she was trying to get away from the idea of the traditional memorial. "Memorials are monuments," she says. "They feel very hierarchical to me. Even if they have been agreed to by committee."

In that sense, the Sonic Memorial seems to live somewhere between memorial and shrine. It is special because it is our sounds, our messages that give it life. It does actually say something about this time and in a way gives victim's voices a context and a form. Yes, the material is all in a sense "found sound" and therefore random. But the way in which it's presented—its combination of chaos and order—is rendered truthfully and movingly.

Only the Web can do this. And it is perhaps because of this combination of chaos and order that the Sonic Memorial may be the best record we will have of that terrible day. We are an orderly society. On September 11th, 2001, we were thrown into chaos by an unimaginable event. But as orderly people we seek, perhaps irrationally, to give structure to events that defy all notions of form.

About Picture Projects

Interactive documentaries aren't new to Picture Projects, a New York based company founded in 1995 by Johnson and Cornyn. Through new media technologies, they create web sites that focus on contemporary social concerns. Their earlier projects online include "AKA Kurdistan", "Re: Vietnam," "Farewell to Bosnia". These works are designed for user involvement, and it is that involvement that keeps sites fluid and dynamic. In fact, public contribution is fundamental to the life of these sites: Threads of emails are linked together to create a story, and pictures are contributed, and inquired about. As the opening page of "RE: Vietman" simply states: "This space doesn't exist without you."

Most recently, Picture Projects completed "360degrees - Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System," in which the company began experimenting with more sophisticated graphics and Flash Animation and audio. 360degrees was such a design success that it won a juried slot for New Media in this years' Media That Matters Film Festival.

It's an expansive piece that tries to provide a complete view of the American criminal justice system. Visitors may choose from a variety of characters, listen to interviews and audio diaries, while looking at photographs of cells, homes and judges chambers in 360 degree rotating panoramic little films. Visitors do not contribute material, but the site is fully interactive.

The Sonic Memorial is a combination of these two styles of work- film and archival- pushed even further: it is both authored and contributory; both aural and visual. And like all Picture Projects' work, the Sonic Memorial has been made in a spirit of great generosity. Alison Cornyn said simply, "I hope that everyone realizes when they listen that they have a story to contribute too- Or a sound, or something. On all the projects we've done, we want to get people to realize that they have something to add."