Pittsburghers have plenty of ideas about what their town’s all about, from its landmarks and views to its food and drinks.
But what about its sounds?
That’s the question artist and architect Susan Narduli is asking with “Immersion: A Pittsburgh Sound Portrait,” the installation she’s creating for the new Pittsburgh International Airport.
The work consists of directional speakers pointed at the new terminal’s escalators and playing a variety of sounds representing the city.
During the past year, the Los Angeles-based Narduli and her team have collected or personally recorded more than 100 sounds.
“We’re looking for sounds people could recognize and they would be meaningful,” she said.
Asked to provide samples, she offered sounds including ice-scraping and children placing their orders at the famous Gus and Yiayia’s North Side ice-ball cart; a freight train making its way through the Mon Valley; birdsong from the National Aviary; and organ music and liturgical singing at St. Anthony’s Chapel, in Troy Hill.
Other sounds in the collection highlight everything from the Pittsburgh Symphony to Steelers fans.
Narduli Studios is nationally known, with projects at the Charlotte Convention Center, the Oklahoma City Convention Center and Palo Alto (California) City Hall, with others in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Commissioned by the Allegheny County Airport Authority, she was inspired to create “Immersion” by the new airport’s design.
“I thought, ‘This is the place where people come into the airport, this is the place where people are going to leave the airport,’” she said. “An airport is a place of transition but it’s also a place of identity, and how can I use this space, this significant space, this architecturally beautiful space, in a way to tell a story about Pittsburgh?”
While any sounds will be considered, Narduli at this point is especially interested in audio that evokes Pittsburgh’s past somehow. She said sounds representing the city’s heavy-industrial heritage, for instance, have been hard to find.
“I would hope that this sound portrait at the end of the day captures not just the day-to-day or the things that immediately come to mind, but do kind of have a bit of this historical context,” she said.
Escalator rides at the terminal will range in duration from about 20 seconds for the two escalators linking the first and second floors to about 40 seconds for the escalator connecting the first and third floors.
Narduli said her team is still working out how long each clip needs to run to register with travelers, who might be distracted or in a rush.
Some of the clips are oral histories a few minutes long. “How do you make that meaningful in a 20-second ride up the escalator?” Narduli said.
The audio clips will play in a random sequence generated by an algorithm, she said, but the algorithm can be tweaked to reflect things like the time of day or special events.
To submit audio or suggestions, see Narduli’s website.
