What We Say To Ourselves When We're Out Walking

“As a side project, [anthropologist Andrew Irving] decided to record the inner dialogues of people walking in New York City — to map part of the city’s thoughtscape, layered beneath its audible soundscape. He approached strangers at different points in the city [and asked them] to wear a microphone headset attached to a digital recorder and speak aloud their thoughts as he followed closely behind with a camera. He would not be able to hear what they were saying, Irving explained, and they would be free to walk wherever they liked and continue their business as usual. ‘I was surprised by how many said Yes,’ Irving says — about 100 in all. By overlaying the recorded audio onto the videos, he has created portraits of individual consciousnesses on a particular day in New York City — transcripts of people’s inner dialogues that remind one of works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and other writers who were especially interested in recreating the mind on the page. He calls the project ‘New York Stories: The Lives of Other Citizens.’”
 — This is the kind of thing you will either be utterly fascinated by or have absolutely no patience for, so proceed on that basis.