Sonic Eraser

Sonic Eraser (2017) is a web-based application developed with Processing that allows users to digitally “scar” selected locations in Google Street View. The project focuses on a series on vacant lots in downtown Buffalo where historic buildings and other architectural structures were demolished over several decades, leaving behind only empty, unused grass lots.

These digital scars symbolically evoke the physical and historical wounds of such sites: the hidden stories and erased histories that remain unseen beneath the seamless surface of Google Street View. By inviting users to inscribe their own marks onto this digital landscape, Sonic Eraser transforms Street View into a palimpsest and a layered record of memory, interpretation, and absence. The project invites audiences to reflect on the loss of buildings and places and to engage with the invisible histories embedded in contemporary landscapes. Through this interactivity, Sonic Eraser connects the digital and the physical, memory and absence, and presence and erasure.