About

About “Sounds Like Staten Island” (SLSI)

Building community through “radical listening”
The goal of SLSI is to build community through “radical listening.” Radical listening is deliberate audio attentiveness. Staten Island, like the rest of the world, is dominated by prepackaged visual and audio stimuli. Through radical listening we engage the world directly with our ears. It brings us the real news, unfiltered by mainstream media and popular culture. Radical listening alerts us to community problems, political undercurrents and environmental issues. It can bring us the joy of nature, the encounter with vanishing history, or an awareness that “noise” can be a gratifying sonic experience.

The SLSI website is for everyone
The SLSI website includes an interactive Google sound map of Staten Island, for those who want to listen to locally-recorded Staten Island sounds. There is an audio events calendar for those who want to promote or attend local audio-related events and community projects. There is an online newsletter (The Sounding Board), for those who want to read articles and literary pieces inspired by Staten Island sounds. If you want to contribute locally-recorded audio clips to the site, you can go to the database upload area. If you want to try some of the SLSI audio activities, there are helpful downloadable pdfs. If you are a teacher, the site provides a wealth of educational ideas that can be adapted to any classroom situation.

The SLSI initiative has been created for the benefit and celebration of Staten Island Life
We look forward to supporting the work of artists, musicians, scholars, audio professionals, community people, and local arts and cultural nonprofits who promote radical listening within the island’s diverse communities—the better to reveal, protect, nurture and contribute to Staten Island’s unique geographic, cultural, natural and built environments.