每座城市都有着自己的地标和景点，看起来各不相同。但在噪音方面，所有的城市听上去似乎都是一样的 —— 道路施工、汽车轰鸣、人声嘈杂。如果只听声音，或许很容易将纽约和南京弄混。
But in the eyes of US composer TodMachover, who’s also a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, every city has its own unique sound. He even started a project to turn everyday noises into classic music and has composed symphonies for several cities around the world, including Detroit in the US, Edinburgh in Scotland, Toronto in Canada, and Perth in Australia.
但在美国作曲家、麻省理工学院教授托德·麦克弗的眼中，每座城市都有自己独特的声音。他甚至还开展了一个将日常噪音变为古典乐的项目，并为包括美国的底特律、苏格兰的爱丁堡、加拿大的多伦多以及澳大利亚的珀斯在内的全球数座城市创作了交响曲。
“Can we listen to this place in a more sophisticated way?’’ is a question that Machover constantly asked himself. This question is also what drove him to collect noises that reflect the characters of each city in the first place.
“我们能以更细致的方式来聆听这个地方的声音吗？”这是麦克弗一直在问自己的问题。这个问题也让他开始收集从一开始就能够体现每座城市特质的噪音。
Detroit, for example, is famously known as the “Motor City” for being the world’s traditional auto manufacturing center. So some of the noises that Machover was targeting were different car engines. But the fact that the city’s auto industry has been declining and has given way to the live music business also makes musical elements ideal for Detroit’s “audio portrait”.
比如，作为全球传统汽车制造中心，底特律是大名鼎鼎的“汽车城”。所以麦克弗要寻找的一些噪音便是不同的汽车引擎声。但事实上，该城的汽车产业正在衰落，为现场音乐产业让道。这也让音乐元素和底特律的“声音肖像”十分契合。
“This is a place where the past, present and future are all mixed up,” Mochover told the Model D Media. “There are audio artifacts everywhere, rhythms that are alive. Nowhere I’ve been is really like Detroit.”
“过去、现在和未来都融合于此，”麦克弗在接受Model D Media 采访时表示。“这里遍地都是声音的手工艺品、鲜活的韵律。我从未像喜爱底特律一样喜欢某个地方。”
It’s a different story for Miami though. Sitting on the beach, Miami is a mixture of the noise of human activity and the natural sound of the ocean and seabirds. The city is also called the country’s “Capital of Latin America” since it has a large population of immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia. Spanish has actually become a dominant language in the city instead of English.
但在迈阿密，故事又截然不同。坐落于沙滩上的迈阿密结合了人类活动的噪音以及海洋海鸟的自然之声。这座城市也被称为美国的“拉美之都”，居住着大量来自古巴、委内瑞拉以及哥伦比亚的移民。实际上，西班牙语已经取代了英语，成了这座城市的主要语言。
“You hear the same words inflected with all kinds of different accents,” Machover told CityLab website.
“你会听见相同的词语在各种不同的口音中发生了改变，”麦克弗在接受CityLab网站采访时表示。
But to characterize cities with their unique sounds is only a part of the project’s concept. What Machover wanted to do is to write a symphony not “for” the city, but “with” the city. So he didn’t only collect sounds by himself but also encouraged local people to submit their recordings.
但用独特的声音来描绘城市的特质只是该项目概念的一部分。麦克弗想做的并不是“为某座城市”创作交响曲，而是“和某座城市”共同创作。所以他不光自己收集声音，也鼓励当地居民发来自己的录音稿。
During the process of making the symphony for Detroit in 2015, Machover received over 15,000 sound samples contributed by the city’s natives. These included local poets’ voices, factory noise and drumming from street artists. Machover then used software to mix the sounds with instruments played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO).
在2015年创作底特律交响曲的过程中，麦克弗收到了该城居民贡献的15000多份声音样本。这些样本包括了当地诗人的声音、工厂的噪音以及街头艺术家的鼓声。麦克弗后来用软件将这些声音和底特律交响乐团演奏的乐器声混合起来。
“The headlines that you hear are their daily lives,” Caen Thomason-Redus from the DSO told US News. “That all tells a very specific message, a firsthand message that would have been secondhand in any other way.”
“你所听见的主要旋律都是他们的日常生活，”底特律交响乐团的Caen Thomason-Redus 在接受《美国新闻和世界报导》时表示。“那些音乐都传递了非常具体的信息，而其他任何的方式都会令这个第一手信息变为第二手信息。”
