While we may not love the screeching of the tracks or the occasional yelp at a rat sighting, one NYC subway station was specifically designed to make pleasant sounds—music, in fact.
In 1996, Christopher Janney equipped the 34th Street Herald Square subway station with a musical project known as “Reach New York, An Urban Musical Instrument.” The project essentially allows commuters to communicate with one another via musical sounds across the subway platform, serving as “a foil for getting total strangers to interact,” shared Janney.
You may not have noticed it before, but next time you’re at the 34th Street station take a look above you and you’ll find a green rectangular structure suspended above the platform.
Along the structure are fixed box-like apparatuses, and if you reach your hand to any one of them, a musical sound will be produced and projected to riders standing on the platform opposite of you. “The hand motions elicit an outpouring of sounds that evoke urban life and bring about duets between strangers waiting for their respective trains,” further explains the MTA.
Janney has spent decades fusing motion, sound and art. He’s known for his interactive work that “turns spectators into participants.” Moreover, Janney isn’t just an acclaimed artist but a trained jazz musician who studied architecture at Princeton and MIT.
You can explore more of Janney’s work online.