CHAMBERS HUM
- 2024 - CHAMBERS ST A/C PLATFORM - NEW YORK, NY -

Subway Vendor Kiosk, 7.1 Spatial Audio System 

CHAMBERS HUM is a public sound art installation by WPZSCH (Emmett Palaima, Nathan Sherman) produced in collaboration with the MTA Vacant Unit Activation Program.

The installation is accessible 7 days a week. Audio behavior is active 23 hours each day, with a short break between the hours of 4AM and 5AM.


Now Playing: Chambers Hum
Composer: Emmett Palaima

In Taos, New Mexico there is a hum, a low but constant resonance of the landscape. Vibrating just on the edges of the listener’s perception, it is heard most often in the solitary hours of the late night and the early morning. A 1995 study by the Acoustical Society of America found that the frequency of the hum varied by individual listener, from 32hZ to 80hZ, suggesting an internal, psychosomatic origin for the sensation, but also that listeners consistently identified a phenomenon of acoustic beating when a reference tone was played for comparison, an effect only produceable by two sounds interacting in physical space.

What then is the hum? What explanation can reconcile these factors: the internal subjective reality, the external objective reality, and the locality to the remote high desert? 

Perhaps the answer lies in attunement: the hum is omnipresent, it permeates all things, both the external world and our own bodies. The universe is a musical scale, a system of vibrations, and in the hum we perceive a lower order harmonic of this great structure. Those who are attuned can perceive the hum, and attunement comes from a lack of distraction. In the solitude of the desert, in a state of sublime peace and boredom, the universal order reveals itself. The meaning of this experience is obscure, but the phenomenon is clear. In the words of Franz Kafka:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

But suppose we cannot remain still and solitary? Suppose we are cast into a state of constant motion? Suppose rather than sitting inert, we wish to take joyful part in the sufferings of the world? How are we to maintain our connection to the universal harmonic order? Suppose we love New York City, and in New York City, the hum is drowned?

With Chambers Hum we have reintroduced this phenomenon into our urban environment of maximum distraction. Arriving subway cars produce a sustained vibration at 224hZ, which Chambers Hum uses as a root note for its tonality. By creating a slowly evolving tonal structure tuned to harmonize with the environmental sounds inherent to the subway system, Chambers Hum restores a connection to the universal order, conveniently located on the Chambers Street A/C Subway Platform.


VIDEO: RICHARD SWAFFORD, AUDIO RECORDED USING 3Dio BINAURAL MICROPHONE