With the installment of the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956, a bipartisan bill lead by President Eisenhower to connect citizens and allow for high-access mobility across the nation, came a change within the United States' soundscape. Through the completion of roads, population growth and an increase in privately owned vehicles, sounds resonating off the highway have come to be heard daily by the abled-hearing subject within a mile radius, masking sounds beneath and drawing our attention to the highway or acting as a low hum in the distance as a steady stream of traffic carries on. 

 

Shifting Soundscapes speculatively captures the change in the nation's soundscape, pinpointing to the difficulties of documenting sounds, prior to the invention of audio-recording devices, and all the sounds that have been lost due  its ephemeral quality of "melting into the air". It also aims to draw attention to Western occularcentric qualities and disregard for sounds, where sounds serve as stand in categorical signifiers (birds = nature) and are not honored in their individuality. We might not notice if a single bird (species) stops singing, but we may notice if suddenly all the bird songs are gone.