“One way for a stranger to crack the plate metal of Manhattan’s social anonymity is to wire a tree. It is a clear-skied, chill April morning and I am standing at the intersection of Eighty-sixth Street and Broadway, using a fleck of removable wax to ease a sensor onto a pear tree’s bark.” I made this recording using an accelerometer run through a sound digitizer. The accelerometer was attached to the tree’s bark, picking up vibrations. We hear the subway (vibrations coming up through the ground) and the sound of a sparrow (vibrations arriving in the air):

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