Crossing 72nd captures the sound, altitude, and walked path along the length of 72nd Street in Manhattan. Each is represented as a line, and the correspondence between them isn’t always evident. Described together, the sounds of a passing bike, children’s laughter and car horns animate the turns of the path.
Clicking at any point on the walked path jumps to the corresponding time in the audio. A vertical playhead indicates the position across all three representations.
Data was collected on the afternoon of Saturday, January 27th, 2018. GPS position and altitude were recorded using a Bad Elf GPS Logger, automatically logging data at 12 second intervals. Audio was recorded using an iPhone 6S, held while walking. Additional data included a series of photos at each intersection, one in each street direction.
In QGIS, the qProf plugin was used to read the GPX data — including timestamps, altitude and position. The captured points were then culled to smooth the line, thus, the irregular spacing of points.
Next Steps:
- Replace the recorded path points with ones taken at regular intervals along the path, using the QChainage plugin.
- Reduce noise in the audio track, particularly in windy sections.
- Fix scaling issue with the browser width.