Citizen Impulse Responses

Echo chambers are both spaces where sounds reflect until they lose their sharp edges and ways for citizens to lose perspective until only one viewpoint is reflected back. Echo chambers and their equivalencies have been used in music for decades. In our social and mass media, echo chambers have only recently made the headlines, particularly leading up to and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These cultural and physical echo chambers can be captured and studied, but what about the echo chambers found in the soundscapes of urban streets? The process and creation of the Citizen Impulse Response Library has connected these echo chambers of politics, democracy, media, and the streets of the U.S. capital. It is a collection of impulse response files created from recordings at protests in Washington, D.C. This conceptual yet tangible product grew from the history of spatial sonic effects, urban, and democratic soundscapes.