Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at [email protected] and we just might feature it here.
Hearing things
What does New York City sound like if you really, really listen? For a New York Times story story shared by Executive Editor Will Doig, Stockholm-based artist Jacek Smolicki took a writer and a photographer on “soundwalks” around Manhattan and Brooklyn, equipped with sensitive microphones to deeply tune into the sounds of the city: a pond in Central Park, a hot dog cart, a street funnel emitting steam. Amid our visually driven lives, the recordings from those walks offer a surprisingly joyful reminder to listen with curiosity to the world around us.
Will says:
Spoiler alert: In a few weeks we’ll launch our series on the health impacts of environmental noise. To whet our appetites, this Stockholm-based artist is taking us on a “soundwalk” in one of the noisiest places on earth: New York City.
Worth a thousand words
When you visit a national park, you’re likely to take photos as a way of remembering the breathtaking scenery. Right now, at national parks and historic sites across the United States, an army of volunteers is taking photos to remember not the mountains or the canyons, but the signs. In a story that caught Contributing Editor Michaela Haas’s attention, the Guardian reports on Save Our Signs, a crowdsourced project working to digitally archive national park signage that could soon be removed by the federal government.
Michaela says:
The current administration is deleting information on U.S. history, slavery, climate change, etc. from its websites, but it is also physically removing historical signs from national parks. Hundreds of amateur archivists are racing to document the signs before they disappear.