White noise of autumn evening

2012 Moskovsky Moskovskaya obl. Russia

Sound installation
one-channel, four speakers

Traffic noise is considered as disturbance, and possibly one of the most troublesome noises to avoid.

​No one living in cities and their suburbs can feel free even in parks or local forests: noise is everywhere (and Moscow is one of the highly noise-polluted cities in the world).

One way of reducing annoyances of traffic noise is to build noise barriers, but there is another method, more environmentally friendly – to mask it with constant or slowly variable full spectrum sounds, such as rain, stream clattering, wind, or even pink or white noise with adaptive volume and tone adjustments.

Finally, white noise with low-frequency modulations was chosen as an optimal option from the point of amplifier efficiency and power consumption.

​When listening to that noise for about 5 minutes, listeners (or, to be truthful, unlisteners) could realize that traffic noise had been disappeared along with the masking one (subjectively, of course).

The installation was set up near our studio in Maryino village and worked every weekend’s evening for one month.