Toronto Standard USE Profile

Urban Sound Ecology was featured in the inaugural edition of the new Toronto Standard online magazine. An excerpt:

With Ritts holding the Edirol in front of him like a dowser, we headed down an alleyway. A chain-link fence separated us from the shipyards on our left. On our right was a warehouse. “I like to go off the grid,” he said, before falling silent so that we captured every sound: the quiet lumbering of a train hauling Hanjin Shipping containers, the hiss of a hydro meter, the clack and scrape of our shoes on the gravelly pavement. When a lone gull gave three shrill staccato cries, like a soloist in avant-garde musical number, Ritts raised the recorder up high. This has become a hobby of his, wandering alleys, parks, industrial sites and grey spaces to capture the sounds of the city. Ritts moved from Toronto last September to start a PhD in geography at the University of British Columbia. He is tall, lean and has the aspect of a flâneur, wearing a black wool coat and a thin striped wool scarf wrapped neatly around his neck.

Read on here. Thanks to Craille Maguire Gillies for taking an interest in our project!