Law & Order’s “Chung Chung” Turns 25

Every pop-culture sound-design element gets its 15 minutes of fame, and sometimes even more. On the 25th anniversary of the Law & Order TV series, the show’s famous “clang,” or “chung chung,” has been stretched to 25 minutes by sound artist John Kannenberg. Kannenberg is pursuing a PhD focusing on the role of sound in the museum, but he’s clearly aware the that the court is just as fertile a bed for audio research as the art gallery. To listen to this stretched to such a length is to go inside the sound and peruse its details. The shimmery lattice of sound is akin to The Matrix‘s bullet time crossed with an electron microscope. You get a sensory experience of every tiny undulation.

Here is the original, via Wikipedia:

Here as a bonus is a 20-minute talk Kannenberg gave recently on “Why Listen to Museums?”

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/johnkannenberg. More from Kannenberg, who also runs the fine Stasisfield label, at johnkannenberg.com.