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    John MacDonald
    Arts Reporter and Critic
    Brooklyn, New York 09.22.010
    Recent Work
    Shared Sounds, Shared Space: the City as Sonic Tableau
    by John MacDonald
    The density of cities is a phenomenon we tend to imagine in human terms – great masses of people shoving their way into subway cars, cramped elevators, and 50-story apartment buildings. But cities are also great generators of sound as much as there of social interaction. The squawk of taxi horns on 5th Avenue, the salsa rhythms of store-front jewelry stores on Canal Street, the drunken cat calls on Ludlow Street at 4 a.m. – these are all as indelible to city life as traffic jams and pollution. And with rock shows at Webster Hall, sound installations at Williamsburg's Monkey Town, and the in-store pop that greets every boutique clothing shopper, New York has just as much to offer indoors as out. If we agree that music (or just plan noise) is a ubiquitous part of New York life, what does this mean in practice? How does an art-form so deeply ingrained in our daily lives affect who we are at home, at work, and at play? What unique cultures, both artistic and domestic, develop in an environment saturated with sound?

    MORE Recent Work:
  • Mohels Give Non-Jewish Babies a Slice of Tradition (Forward)
  • More Than a Little Night Music (New York Times City Section)
  • Audition and Its Discontents (Brooklyn Rail)
  • free103point9: Ten Years of Transmission Arts (Brooklyn Rail)
  • Interpol - Our Love to Admire (Prefixmag.com)
  • M. Ward - Duet for Guitars #2 (Prefixmag.com)
  • Mogwai - Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (Prefixmag.com)
  • THE BASICS
    jmacdonald324@gmail.com

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