sanitary tones: ayre #1[Airblade]

The first étude in a suite of hand dryer sound energy studies, in this case inspecting the Dyson Airblade. An airblade, with c. 2 years of use, was recorded in BRE's large anechoic chamber, over a reflecting plane, with a measurement microphone. Ex-situ recording allows us to capture the inherent sound energy of the device independent of an acoustic environment, such as the highly reflective public washroom. The work slowly unfolds shards of frequency band extracted from the densely compacted, turbulent white noise generated from the 10 second cycle of interfering parallel air sheets traveling at 400 mph. Dramatic fluctuation in the spectrum are due to the interjection of the hands shortening the journey of the air sheets, reflecting the air back at the casing, causing further mutual interference. The sanitary tones suite forms a creative response to a larger project investigating the noise effects of high-speed hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs.