Waste Rhythms is a living data sculpture that transforms New York City’s sanitation data into physical records that can be seen, touched, and heard. These custom-fabricated “data vinyl” discs encode years of neighborhood waste data in concentric rings, with twelve segments representing the months of each year. Like the growth rings of a tree, each disc accumulates traces of time. Subtle variations in surface height reveal fluctuations in waste generation, forming a sculptural terrain that reflects the changing rhythms of urban life. A custom-built player slowly rotates the discs as a sensor-equipped stylus traces their surfaces, translating the encoded data into synthesized sound in real time. Through this process, numerical patterns become an evolving sonic landscape, inviting visitors to listen to the collective rhythms of the city. Waste often remains at the margins of our attention, becoming visible only when it accumulates on sidewalks or collection systems fail. Yet it is intimately connected to how we live, consume, and gather. It carries material traces of everyday activities, revealing shifts in neighborhood life and offering a lens into the vitality, pressures, and transformations of urban communities. Through the transformation of monthly refuse tonnage into sculptural textures and synthesized sound, Waste Rhythms amplifies the often-unnoticed patterns of urban life. What begins as abstract municipal data becomes a tangible and audible landscape, inviting audiences to encounter the rhythms, fluctuations, and accumulated traces of the city. In amplifying these overlooked traces, the work invites us to listen to the city not as a fixed landscape, but as a living accumulation of everyday rhythms and collective memory.
Website: https://haochehung.com/Waste-Rhythm