John Davies, fine artist, has created a beautiful miniature sound wave crystalline sculpture, using tracks that best represent Manhattan and its rich musical history. Davies named this laser-cut perspex piece, Soundscape: The Physical Sounds of Manhattan, and described it as a love letter to New York City’s musical past. The work includes a 3D map constructed from plastic, transparent vinyl record, and a booklet that outlines his extensive research on his creation.
The buildings that make up Davies’ miniature model are created from the peaks and valleys of sound waves from famous NYC songs, with the heights of each peak adjusted to reflect the degree of their respective influence on the city’s music scene. For example, The Lower East Side is represented by a towering Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, and Harlem is packed with skyscraping visualizations of Ella Fitgerald and Louis Armstrong’s ‘Autumn in New York‘. Davies told The Creators Project that he wanted this piece to reflect the deeper issue of “the loss of multi-sensory experience in modern music,” as well as positively “shine a light on this rich and vibrant history ingrained in the various neighbourhoods of Manhattan.”
Check out this beautifully nostalgic and inspired video clip of the project and more pictures of Davies sculpture here.
