Are there sounds of our city we desensitize?

Hammers we hear, trains, traffic and industries,
surviving lakes, birds on trees,
addresses and approvals – we hear.
Are we missing to hear an integrity, a plead,

an undertone of the city? An overtone? A polyphone? Millions of them in a cosmic float?

Delhi Polyphone is a series of multichannel compositions and performances, composed solely of Delhi’s undertones, overtones, and many other polyphones. The project looks to polyphony as offering different ways of aural attention – to gather poetic resonances from the peripheral tones of the city. After recording soundscapes from around Delhi, including tombs, railway stations and tracks, lakes, atmospheric virtual tones, parks, industrial areas, bridges, underpasses, universities, and ultrasonic environments – BaRiya synthesized the captured soundscapes. Using a wide variety of inverse notch filters, the artists picked out strands of tones which go by unheard. Strands that form the multidimensional structure of a polyphonic environment that can be decomposed into an infinite number of harmonics.

These strands give us hints into the metaphysics and a larger resonance of the city – a resonance in which they converge in the form of virtual tones – tones made by the interaction of all the elements of Delhi in a decentralized sonic atmosphere. Aural auroras of an everyday city.