A whisper is 40 decibels, a normal conversation, 60. A loud brunch reaches 70 or 80, while a screeching subway clocks in at around 100. A screaming jet engine is 110 decibels. Sound waves higher than 10 decibels are absorbed by pyramids and wedges jutting from walls, floor, and ceiling like stalagmites and stalactites inside Doug Wheeler's PSAD Synthetic Desert III, now open to the public at New York's Guggenheim Museum. It's the quietest room I've ever been in, and according to architecture consultancy Arup, among the quietest places in the world's 7th-loudest city.I know this from personal experience, having lived exclusively next to major subway stations in my years. If it's not the train itself that wakes you up at 3 AM, it's the aggressively drunk partiers shouting about how much fun they're having. That's why, when I heard about the Wheeler's new installation, billed as the quietest room in the city, I hauled ass to get there. Synthetic Desert is a semi-anechoic chamber filled to bursting with a sound absorbent material called basotect. Standing inside a specially-designed room tucked into the heart of the Guggenheim simulates Wheeler's own journeys into the barren desert of northern Arizona. I exit a noisy subway platform, and breathe a sigh of anticipation.Wheeler is a 60s-era minimalist painter-turned-light and space artist similar, in some ways, to James Turrell. He's concerned with peeling back human perception, using soft light, rounded corners, and rigid standards of cleanliness to cultivate otherworldly experiences. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles, then spent years funding his groundbreaking works out of pocket, one at a time, well before "immersive experience" was a buzz word.Continue reading on Creators.
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