Marconi Tower 1.0 (Lewis St)

By Ariela Handler, Jacqueline Kennedy, Brooke Poznak, and Koonfai Xie, Binghamton University

For us, an aural postcard means many things. Obviously, it includes a selection of the sounds associated with the Marconi Tower. However, it also includes the history that comes along with it. The metaphorical "front" of our aural postcard — the Marconi Tower's public face — begins simply with what the tower looks like, which really hasn’t been altered much over the years. However, behind this picture is so much history so we will attempt to portray how the Marconi tower and its surroundings have in fact changed over time. What the public sphere sees includes the tower and the retired train station; it is represented by the sound of the train, thinking this is the only sound someone might hear if they are around the tower.

The private element — the metaphorical "back" of the postcard, where people wrote their individual messages —includes what isn’t obvious from the picture. This information is obtained via interviews; maps from TechWorks! and all the information Susan Sherwood provided us with. The back also represents the sounds created by the systems that the workers used to communicate with the train and surrounding areas. This is represented by the sounds of the Morse Code system.