Shop Talk: P’unk Avenue Active Intersection’s Ashley John Pigford

If you visit P’unk Avenue this month, you may enter an audio/visual time warp. But if you survive, you’ll be in for something special.
Ashley John Pigford is currently showing his Active Intersection sound installation at the space, an electro-organic experience that translates a busy intersection into an audio/visual sense frenzy.
A camera records sound and video happening on the street. A computer extracts information from the recorded data and outputs it into a droning, fluctuating melody. All of the re-processed sound than gets synced to a projection of the video recording.
“Consider it taking real life as data, translating it, and putting it back out to real life,” Pigford said.
It’s trippy. We know.
An Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware, Pigford teaches about the creative process and advises students in areas of new media. He said he is inspired by translating common experiences into things more significant. Exposing the beauty of the every day, he says. “Turning the practical into the poetic.”
When Pigford was asked by P’unk Ave to use their front window along Passayunk Avenue as his canvas, he became interested in the activity that happens in the intersection in front of the Web development studio. He wondered how he could get passersby to experience the situation in a different way through his own translation.
Walk past P’unk Avenue’s home near 9th and Federal streets in the Passyunk Square neighborhood of South Philadelphia and find out how Pigford did just that.

He said he’s always been interested in sound. It’s a medium and a phenomenon that doesn’t sacrifice itself for our eyes—it penetrates more deeply, he said. He decided to try to translate the sound constantly cycling in the intersection.
The installation is powered by Max/MSP, a graphical development environment for music and multimedia applications that allows for the manipulation of digital audio signals in real-time.
“It deals a lot with sensors and outputs [sound data] to motors and interactive installations, stuff like that.”
The software takes data fluctuations that exist in his video—the contrast, the movement, the color palate—and applies them to a base melody—the words “Passayunk Avenue” taken letter by letter, with each letter transposed to a musical note based on its position in the alphabet.
So, “P” transcribes to a “G” note. And as the G-note drones, activity being recorded by the video camera facing the intersection is converted into data that effects the modulation of that tone.
The more people and cars passing by the intersection, the higher the envelope fluctuation. If a pigeon walks slowly across the street, it sees less fluctuation.

“You’re going to hear the modulation of two frequencies, and your ear is going to make up what is happening to those waves, literally,” Pigford said.
Meanwhile, live audio samples being recorded by the camera play over top of the fluctuating melody.
The audio is discreet, something in the realm of Brian Eno, he said. Listening to it, it bears a resemblance to an orchestral soundtrack. Moody, frightening, and ethereal—when the tone fluctuates, it can cause chills.
And that’s only half of it. As the audio twists your brain, video of the intersection is projected on a thin sheet in front of the window.
“When you look at the storefront you will see an image of the intersection. If you walk up to it, you will see yourself actually projected into the window,” Pigford said.
He had trouble figuring out how to make the installation available to people. He knew he’d have to convince his potential audience to take the time to allow themselves to experience what he was trying to convey.
“This piece is not like a traditional painting where you say, ‘OK, I get it,’ and walk away. It’s not a two-second MTV news flash,” he said.
For now, he’s broadcasting the audio with a short-range FM transmitter. He hopes to have streaming audio and video of the installation online this week. The installation should run for another month.
“There’s these variances that come along that you don’t expect. Sometimes the frequency modulation awakens you, and then you’ll hear these layers of sonic experience that tell you what’s going on. It might make you turn and look at the intersection,” he said.
“It’s constantly changing, constantly flowing, which I think is a very positive human experience.”
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