What does quiet sound like?
This musician is on a mission to help find the last naturally quiet spots on Earth. Brut followed Ethan Bourdeau on his quest to find the quietest spot in New York City ...
Quiet Parks International
This musician is on a mission to help find the last naturally quiet spots on Earth. Brut followed Ethan Bourdeau on his quest to find the quietest spot in New York City ...
Quiet Parks International
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TravelTranscript
00:00What I'm trying to capture is the stillness, it's the wind in the leaves, maybe scurrying of squirrels.
00:10I'm like distracted listening to the really crystal clear sounds of my own voice.
00:14We are here because this spot has quiet properties for people to come and experience a really impactful sense of quiet.
00:32There's no single view of a man-made object in this general area, something that is quite rare in New York City.
00:44Sound is a crucial and critical element of the environment at large.
00:57It really affects every creature that inhabits this landscape.
01:15I talk to so many people who say, oh you just get used to the noise, you get used to the sound, but your body doesn't.
01:24Specifically, noise has been shown to play a role in myocardial infarction, heart or heart disease.
01:31It plays a role in elevated stress, high blood pressure, obesity, test scores and lower performance of students in educational settings.
01:42Specifically with students who are located near high trafficked roadways or airports.
01:50So we feel the adverse effects all the time, even if we throw on our headphones.
01:55We have these hills here that are separating us from the roadway on the west side of Manhattan, which blocks a significant amount of sound.
02:16To measure sound, we use this sound level meter, which measures the sound pressure level in the air, which is denoted by decibels.
02:32When we sit in silence for a second, it will tell us what the ambient noise level of the park is.
02:38Even in such a cacophonous metropolis like New York City, there is a place where you can just stop and even right now for a moment just hear the wind in the trees.
02:59These valleys where the pitch comes in steadily and as the plane passes overhead, the pitch drops quite a bit.
03:06Then here is this more instantaneous sound of a train honk somewhere in the distance.
03:11But what you might not be able to see here in some of these sections of silence where there is no contribution from unwanted noise are elements that make up the acoustic ecology of the park.
03:23Here was the section where we were able to hear the hooting of an owl right before the honk of this Metro-North train.
03:36And here is the section where we were able to hear the hooting of an owl right before the honk of this Metro-North train.
03:45Listening is so important in that I have started taking my headphones off on my commutes and started to listen more to the world around me.
04:04And I really hope that it gets people thinking about what quiet means in their day-to-day life, maybe how they can contribute to the preservation of quiet, whether it be in parks or in their day-to-day activities.