Sound is probably the medium able to reaching the broadest viewers—not less than till it turns into a linguistic or codified message. For that reason, it should be the simplest type of public artwork. But few large-scale works function inside the sonic dimension, particularly when set in opposition to the bustling, buzzing panorama of a metropolis like New York. Artist Chloë Bass has taken on this problem, embedding her public paintings as frequencies that disrupt the abnormal stream of communication, miscommunication and noise that outline one in every of New York’s most crowded areas: the subway system.
When you hear one thing, free one thing is a public sound undertaking by Chloë Bass, offered by Artistic Time and MTA Arts & Design. For the primary time, artwork not solely adorns the century-old, principally decadent MTA infrastructure however takes over the house via frequencies and storytelling, transferring via stations as each sound and message. Via October 5, Bass’s sonic work performs intermittently in key station mezzanines, overlapping with MTA bulletins and reaching a whole bunch of hundreds of riders to introduce a second of poetry and surprise.
Though Bass is not any stranger to public work, that is her first time working via sound. Not too long ago, she has grown more and more interested by creating new types of monuments. What does it imply to create a monumental gesture that’s ephemeral, even fleeting—one thing skilled solely via direct encounter, not simply with house but in addition with time? These had been the guiding reflections that led her to this piece.
“I’ve lived in New York my whole life, and for me, the place the place you attain the most individuals has at all times been public transit,” she tells Observer. “When you consider a monument as a matter of scale, transit itself is already a transferring monument, for higher and for worse.” For Bass, intervening within the soundscape of that system meant creating a brief but highly effective gesture—one which lingers even because it vanishes.
Bass’s intervention is radically ephemeral, and thru its very transience, it confronts the each day chaos of New York’s public transit system—exposing its complicated, typically miscommunicated nature. To withstand this cacophony, most riders retreat into self-contained soundscapes by sporting headphones. But the subway can be a primary web site of encounters—with “the opposite,” with the spectrum of people that make up New York. Headphones can insulate riders from that relational, interactional dimension, preserving their personal bubble at the price of connection.
The piece each confronts and embraces these dynamics, drawing out the strain between them. “It’s nice if individuals want to make use of their headphones on the prepare. It’s additionally nice in the event that they miss these bulletins; many riders by no means hear them, and that’s okay too,” the artist displays. “However for many who do catch them, it turns into a small encounter that feels totally different, even particular—an invite to interact with the house and with one another in a brand new means.” On this context, sporting headphones turns into a missed alternative—not solely to listen to the work, however, as in each day life, to come across one other individual’s story and perspective.
Bass factors out that New York’s subway is already wealthy with storytelling. Even the MTA posts indicators that say, “Don’t develop into somebody’s subway story,” supposed to police conduct—don’t do one thing others will later recount, whether or not as an annoyance or a punchline. For Bass, although, that phrase reveals the house’s untapped potential. “We’re at all times telling tales about what occurs to us on public transportation, and that’s a very good factor,” Bass says. “It’s a part of what brings us collectively—sharing how we commute, what occurs on our means, and the individuals we encounter who’re totally different from us. These experiences take us outdoors ourselves and remind us that we’re a part of one thing bigger.”
In conceiving this sound piece, Bass got down to create counter-announcements—ones distinct from the MTA’s, which regularly use sound as a software of management and surveillance. “As I used to be writing them, I stored asking what the present bulletins truly do. Most are a single voice telling you learn how to behave, reminding you the police are current, or saying the place you might be and what the following cease is,” she notes. In response, she launched content material and sonic textures these bulletins by no means embrace. Some are dialogues, voiced by two or three audio system. Others function buzzing or singing layered beneath the phrases, including dimension past language. Most significantly, none of them tells you what to do. “They’re not about monitoring your conduct or anybody else’s; they’re about opening one other form of house,” explains Bass.
To foster a extra accessible and inclusive setting, Bass’s sonic work performs in a number of languages—English, Spanish, Arabic, Bangla, Haitian Kreyòl and Mandarin—mirroring the cultural and linguistic variety that defines New York Metropolis. To additional assist accessibility, ASL translations of all bulletins can be found as movies on Artistic Time’s web site.
By likelihood, one of many Mandarin bulletins performed throughout an early take a look at. “An older Asian couple occurred to be strolling by the place we had been testing,” Bass recounts. “They’d no thought something was occurring, and when the Mandarin announcement came visiting the speaker, they each regarded startled at first—after which abruptly excited. It was actually transferring to witness that response.”
That second additionally underscores a broader subject: the MTA’s personal bulletins not often accommodate such variety, reinforcing cultural and linguistic boundaries that always go unnoticed but carry actual penalties. To make sure her bulletins resonated—grounding listeners in one thing acquainted or providing a way of ease—Bass developed the work in deep collaboration with group members, making it participatory from the outset. She organized focus teams with a cross-section of standard transit customers, together with teenagers, adults, transit advocates and MTA staff. Every of the 24 poetic bulletins begins with a customized tone, designed by Bass in collaboration with artist Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and delivered by a mixture of skilled performers and on a regular basis New Yorkers.
It’s notable that an artist like Bass—identified for a multidimensional observe rooted in public sculpture and efficiency—has chosen to faucet into sound. Her resolution displays a broader shift, as sound-based works more and more seem at biennials and exhibitions, with artists turning to storytelling, oral traditions and immersive sonic environments. This transfer could be seen as a response to the present second: in a tradition saturated with visuals—the place each pictures and textual content danger turning into white noise—sound nonetheless has the facility to chop via, providing emotional resonance inside the slim span of consideration of an more and more desensitized viewers.
Bass sees a number of causes for this shift. “The oversaturation in visible tradition is true—we’re consistently bombarded with pictures. However actually, we’re oversaturated in virtually each sensory dimension nowadays,” she notes. “What’s distinctive about sound is the way it engages us in a different way—the way it strikes via the physique, the way it hits the feelings.”
There’s additionally a realistic side. Sound permits artists to create impactful public works with fewer supplies and decrease manufacturing prices. “It’s an costly time to be alive, and if you happen to can work in kinds that aren’t so materially heavy, that’s useful for artists economically.”
Nonetheless, as Bass’s piece makes clear, sound is uniquely highly effective in public house due to its universality. It will possibly transcend language and viewers boundaries extra fluidly than many different kinds.
Chloë Bass’s When you hear one thing, free one thing continues via October 5, 2025, within the following subway stations:
- Bronx: Westchester Sq. (6) and 167 Road (B, D)
- Queens: Courtroom Sq. (7, G), 74th Road – Broadway (7), and Mets Willets Level (7)
- Brooklyn: Clinton-Washington Avenues (G), Fort Hamilton Parkway (F, G), York Road (F), and Atlantic Avenue / Barclays Middle (2,3,4,5).
- Manhattan: Grand Central (S), fifth Avenue, Bryant Park (7), Fulton Road (4,5), 163 Road Manhattan (A, C), and Union Sq. (4,5,6).
