Noise Cancelled

DATA VISUALIZATION / EDITORIAL DESIGN

Noise surrounds our lives, whether it is the sound of a fleeting car on the street, or the chirping sound of the bird on the tree, even some indistinct broken sound from somewhere can interrupt the peace we crave so much for. It's chaotic, disrupting, annoying sometimes; therefore the need to have noice be cancelled out is on the rise. Noise cancelling devices more and more met this need with its convenience and easy access, whether it's the latest over-ear headphones, a pair of tiny earplugs or a small hub to put inside your room. But technology can never really be the optimal solution for our problem with noise pollution.

This editorial piece will explore how noise cancellation works and how its technological function reflects some other societal issues in relation to noise.

1.
The project started with and exploration of sound visualization. Using recorded materials of noise on the streets of Toronto and P5.js programming language, the resulted visuals reflected a sporadic and nuanced layers of sounds or noises through dotted peaks of frequencies. The highest peaks or the loudest sound are usually what gets past the technology of noise cancellation devices because it is a break through from the pattern that the device mute off from the users ears.

A set of icons created to represent each step of the noise cancellation process

2.
Using the dotted sound visualizations and the set of glyphs signifying the different noise-cancelling stages, I want to tell a story about how silence has become a commodified luxury for human in this technological age polluted with noise. We try to block out the noise by covering our ears with expensive new tech as a coping mechanism. Meanwhile the technology are eagerly listening to our noises in order to create more sounds into the already chaotic soundscape.

The project uses P5.js, Glyphs App, Adobe Illustrator and Iphone 11's voice memos

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