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~ of many movements and thresholds ~

Sonic Diary

What are the ways in which a city shapes one’s own practices, perceptions, and preoccupations? The author reflects on this question through his composition that opens up portals into the many memories of his time spent in Delhi, India, through a mix of field recordings, conversations, voices, and sounds from his journal. The piece, for him, becomes a sonic trace of the city that stays on with him as he continues his movement across other locations and experiences.

In this sonic diary, inspired by «Doors of Perception» by Hildegard Westerkamp, I offer portals into the thresholds of my memory from the time I lived in Delhi from 2016 to 2021. During those six years, Delhi in many ways opened «doors of perception» for me, through the many experiences, mentors, and friends who helped me develop an interest and practice with sound and listening. Through this piece, I also want to pay homage to two of my special teachers and friends, Michael Northam and Damon Yaghoobi.

This piece is a record, an audio document of many movements, moving through the city with my field recorder, sometimes restless, sometimes performative, sometimes political, sometimes sublime, sometimes restful, sometimes playful, sometimes with company, sometimes without, but always listening.

continue and slowly lower the volume and pan to a side
while one door opens and the next voice appears

It’s next to impossible to nail down what the essence of a city such as Delhi is, but what is possible is to listen. As I shift continents to study sound professionally for the first time, this piece is a way for me to tie little Delhi knots onto a memory line, to listen to 20 years from now.

These are names that I have given to the audio files from my Delhi field recordings archive. I am sharing them here in the order that they have been used in the piece:

Park-next-to-home-in-vasant-kunj.wav
paper-collector-calls-vasant-kunj.wav
Aryya-hindustani-prodigy.wav
Aditya-nithin-improv at vasant kunj.wav
slicing_vegetables_mom_youtubecookingchannel.wav
improvisation _with_a_dry_branch@professor-aseem’s house.wav
Defence_Colony_Azan.wav
Michael_Northam_Ashoka_On_Sound_Art.wav
Janata_curfew-noise concert.wav
nizamuddin_curious_kids_playing_cricket.wav
Damoon Yaghoobi_playing_the_violin in Gurgaon.wav
thomas:does_it_feel_lonely?.wav

This sonic diary is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Delhi», curated and edited by Suvani Suri.

Project Assistance: Geetanjali Kalta
Graphics/Visual Design: Upendra Vaddadi, Neelansh Mittra
Audio Production: Abhishek Mathur
Video Production: Ammar

Biography

Nithin Shams’ artistic practice is centered around opening sonic portals to facilitate listeners to enter an open, empathetic, and attentive state of mind. Guided by intuitive processes and practices of deep listening, Nithin composes and curates listening spaces aimed at blurring the boundaries between the self and the other, opening up a space for reflection as well as slowness. Nithin is currently engaged in an artistic research project where he is recording the call of the azan as it reverberates through the cities, towns, and villages of India. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, X, or SoundCloud.

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Delhi Sensate

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This is a collection of songs bringing together myriad voices from the city of Delhi, where multiple realities collide and co-exist.

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Published on September 29, 2023

Last updated on April 09, 2024

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Norient City Sounds: Delhi

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The City at Dawn

Sound Piece

by Pale Blue Dotter,

beatnyk

As a part of a longitudinal inquiry into soundscape ecologies, Pale Blue Dotter (Surbhi) and beatnyk (Padmanabhan) set out to record dawn choruses in different parts of Delhi, weaving the soundscapes into a composition that reveals a city of contradictions just as it wakes up.

Delhi is a city of contrasts – on the one hand, the city is getting denser with highrises that touch the sky, and on the other people are being evicted from their homes in a major demolition drive in preparation for the G20 summit. The river flows through the city, cutting it into two halves; however, water still remains a scarce commodity in many of the residential parts. In some neighborhoods, overhead tanks are overflowing with water, whereas in others, the residents are compelled to trek for kilometers to fetch water for basic needs.

Gradual urbanization of Delhi’s landscape over the last 30 years, giving us a glimpse of the sounds that remain and those that are lost (credits: beatnyk, Google Earth).

Fascinated by the ever-increasing anthropocentric demands and contradictory narratives that exist in the city, we (Pale Blue Dotter and beatnyk) wanted to embark on a journey to shed light on these contrasts with our trusty field recorders. Even in the face of the noise pollution that has been taking over the city, the birds have found a way to continue singing, thus showcasing one of the most stark contrasts of the city – the coexistence of anthropogenic and biophonic sounds.

The dawn chorus is the outbreak of birdsong at the start of a new day. We began our exploration by listening to the dawn and this coexistence that comes to life every day. Through visiting a range of sites that included areas under urban development, as well as the few remaining natural landscapes within the city, various perspectives began to appear around the way the city sounds at dawn at each location. After several listening sessions, we set out to record dawn choruses at every location and identify patterns that materialized as the soundscape that was eventually stitched together.

«City at Dawn» soundscape mapped and timestamped over the landscape of New Delhi (credits: beatnyk, Google Earth).

During the course of listening to and creating the soundscape, we noticed the myriad ways of coexistence that inform the daily lives of human and more-than-human species. From the birds that score the dawn, to the river that keeps time and the technology that defies it, all forms of existence begin the cycle together and sustain peacefully. There seems to be magic in the symphony of life that awakens the city every day and the dawn chorus zeroes in on this sphere of existence that accounts for all living forms, not just humans.

Voice-Over Credits

01:04. The Indian Express: «Delhi MCD Elections: Taps Of Posh Vasant Kunj Area Run Dry» (YouTube)

07:32. Phone recording of excerpts from «All India Radio Morning News, June 10, 2023» (YouTube)

13:58. Al Jazeera English: «Devotion suffocates India’s sacred Yamuna river» (YouTube)

18:40. Nirantar Trust X The Third Eye: «Paani Ki Katar» (YouTube)

This sound piece is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Delhi», curated and edited by Suvani Suri.

Project Assistance: Geetanjali Kalta
Graphics/Visual Design: Upendra Vaddadi, Neelansh Mittra
Audio Production: Abhishek Mathur
Video Production: Ammar