Hey, straphanger! You know that screeching, screaming sound of subways roaring down the track that makes your ears bleed if you get too close to the yellow line?
It'll soon be mitigated by the chirping birds and bubbling brooks of Mother Nature – or at least that's the idea.
If the MTA gives the OK, the bustling subway station at 96th Street and Broadway will soon supplement the clamorous racket of the underground with nature sounds – a calming soundtrack that'll play in a loop from hidden speakers, according to The New York Times.
The nature infusion is about aesthetics – and it would be one element of an art project that draws on modern graphic design and Asian pop art for inspiration.
“It’s an experiment in many ways, to see what else will work in this environment,” Sandra Bloodworth, director of Arts For Transit, the part of the MTA that oversees art in the transit system, told the Times. “We want to challenge what we know how to do.”
Come fall 2010, when station construction is expected to be finished, straphangers will enter through a striking glass-and-steel structure, push past the turnstiles underneath swaying stainless-steel flowers and "walk through" the nature sounds playing from directional speakers located throughout the station, the Times reports.
The contemporary garden and nature soundtrack will be a tribute to the subway's history. While the surrounding landscape is now littered with high-rise apartment buildings and raucous intersections, it was far more pastoral when the station was built in 1904, according to the Times.
“The installation is a memento of nature past, so that subway riders may be reminded of a time before the area became an urban neighborhood,” designers Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa wrote in an introductory note.
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The nature motif might be a good idea, if a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health is any indication. Researchers found that the din from squealing breaks and deafening trains could cause "permanent, irreversible, noise-induced hearing loss."
Unfortunately, the sounds would have to be played incredibly loudly to drown out the squealing of passing subways, which isn't the plan. Bloodworth told the Times that the calming sounds would be played at a low volume if the proposal gets approved.
So what happens when that earsplitting train comes zooming by?
"I imagine it would drown the sound out," she said.
