By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — One innovative technology guru has designed a way to transform the chaotic cacophony of the New York City subway system into a sonorous sonata.
Interactive designer Alexander Chen’s Web project, Conductor, turns Massimo Vignelli's 1972 subway map design into a virtual stringed instrument using the MTA’s actual transit schedule data.
In Chen’s adaptation of the minimalist map, each colored line becomes the string of a cello pizzicato that is plucked to create a sound when virtual train lines intersect along their routes. The longer the train path is, the lower the note it plays when plucked, mimicking the strings on a real instrument.
"I've always been interested in making music from these dry, everyday type things," said Chen, 29, who moved to Brooklyn from Sweden in September. "I started writing some code to simulate a plucked instrument and I thought the NYC subway would be a perfect model to apply it to," he added.
By culling the MTA's schedule each minute to check for departing trains, Conductor starts in real-time when opened and then speeds up through a 24-hour cycle of the day’s scheduled trains. The trains are launched from their end stations and each line's speed is based on the MTA's estimated trip duration.
Because the project is based on a nearly 40-year-old subway diagram that includes the now-defunct 8 train and Third Avenue El, Chen only runs these "ghost trains" between midnight and 2 a.m.
Chen, who works as a contractor for Google’s Creative Lab and plays the viola, said his love for music, design, and technology served as his inspirations for the project.
"It turns something really noisy and chaotic into something that's calming and beautiful to listen to, which is what I was aiming for," Chen told DNAinfo.
The project has inspired users to become their own virtual musicians, creating staccato symphonies with multiple browser windows.
"I've seen that people have been opening multiple windows to create more sound, so they're really creating their own music out of it, which I think is great and I hadn't really thought of that use case," Chen said.
"I'm a musician by trade, but at the same time I also really enjoy what technology can do for us now and how technology enables us to do things like this."
