New Cultural Journeys

Imagine!!! Capturing the rain or changes in the weather and turning this into a sound space of information, a local narrative or participatory game space! The idea would be to use transmitters to network the public into a common art experience along the coast of Lancashire.


Hertzian Rain by Mark Shepard - is a live sound project which filters multiple sound and is streamed from a set of wireless transmitters placed in an urban space. The transmitters broadcast the live audio stream locally on the same radio frequency to participants who are wearing wireless headphones tuned to this frequency.

This event is designed to raise awareness of issues surrounding the wireless topography of urban environments through audio experiences based on sound and movement.

Participants carry umbrellas made of electromagnetic field (EMF) shielding fabric that enable them to actively shape the surrounding environment of radio waves. By orienting the umbrella in different ways, one is able to filter the interfering radio signals and select a single audio stream to listen to. The movements of the crowd are sensed by accelerometers attached to the umbrellas and this data is broadcast locally to the sound makers via an ad-hoc wireless network, who in turn use these data streams to modify the sound streams.

Sound sources might include real-time ambient sounds produced by a sound artist, a spoken word performance or live music from a local or remote location mixed in real-time by mobile DJ, for example.

This is one of many exciting projects by Mark Shepard.

Sound Garden + Networked Public Spaces

The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] toolkit is an open source software platform for cultivating public "sound gardens" in the city. It can be used to create social public spaces for people to participate in an digital environment to build a technologically mediated garden.

Working with mobile audio devices like the iPod, the toolkit enables anyone with access to wireless (WiFi) "hot zones" to install a "sound garden" for public use. Using a WiFi enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants "plant" sounds within a positional audio environment.

These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3D audio engine common to gaming environments - overlaying a publicly created soundscape onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a WiFi enabled device, participants drift though virtual sound gardens as they move throughout the city.

Blitz-light :: RFID tags and City Games

More Lights to Dark City Spaces!
Welcome to Blitz Play Hero!

Blitz-Light use interactive tags, circuit-bent electronics (in the shape of small trees) and Nintendo DS Light game consoles to create a live street concert of sound and light. The wireless network becomes activated by players (or cyclists) carrying small sound-amplifiers on their belts or which can be fitting to a bicycle.

The trees start of light up with bright coloured LED lights when in contact with the RFID tag.


Based on the sequence of the RFID tag (which works like a bar code) various sounds are generated on the DS light console. The numbers and sounds are then transferred to an online map which charts the players throughout the city. Great way to see your journey through the city!


There are 3 main game levels:

In LEVEL 1 players use the DS to “sniff” out open and closed WIFI hotspots. These are marked as playclouds (areas in the city where RFID tags can be placed). Players or cyclists chalk the symbol of a DS d-pad knob to indicate that a playcloud has been created. The location of the playclouds are stored on the DS as text file and is up-loaded to a Google map to store the data. This game data is overlayed on a map of the city with black and white polygons to represent players location.

The playclouds are assigned a base sound, used later in the concert, and at this point a player can view the map and begin to create a score of music, or simply use it to locate their nearest open WIFI spot.

LEVEL 2 invites players to find the playclouds and place RFID tags at their location. The system automatically assigns them a sound. This again is stored on the DS and transferred to the online map - updated with each tag.

LEVEL 3 is the live concert.
Players return to playclouds, scanning their own and other player’s tags, to play the sound on the DS. Each player becomes an instrument in the orchestra of RFID readers.

Throughout the levels players are awarded points for finding clouds, placing tags, and generating music, and thus the Blitz Play Hero is declared.

Songbike

"Come out for a ride + make a bicycle soundscape"

Songbike is a sound-based project by artist; Kelly Andres. Installed on a bike, is a mobile sound lab, which records and automatically uploads audio to a website. Songbike connects people with shared interest in community and aurality; allowing them to self author and self-produced content and social interaction.

Mobile Sound :: Sonic City

Sonic City is a project that presents the city as a musical instrument. The project imagines the city in terms of a sound and music space, giving the people in those urban spaces the ability to create sound and experience musical compositions. The city becomes an interactive musical interface.


Sonic City enabled people to create music by walking through a city. By using wearable mobile computer technology - the perception of place, time and the activity applied to exploration the urban sapces turns into personal audio creation.

"We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic music making."

The city becomes an interactive and physical interface. The architecture and urban surrounding provide a built infrastructure to use creatively. The everyday activity of walking or cycling through the urban space can be translated into movement and choreography and captured by the city interface. Through the use of mobile and wireless tools this movement can be translated into narrative and creative feedback.

Sonic City was created by Ramia Mazé, Play Studio, Lars Erik Holmquist, Future Applications Lab and Lalya Gaye, Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute.

Mobile Sound: Walking and Listen

AURA, is project by artist Steve Symons, which allows people leave a digital audio trail as they move and walk through their physical surrounding.


People take a backpack and headphones on a walk and in a defined radius the walker experiences sounds at specific areas anchored by GPS points.

Sound to drive a narrative journey

Artist are using mobile and wireless technologies to overlay digital information onto real spaces.
Audio sounds can be embedded at a certain location and information triggered to which it refers.

Imagine walking or cycling along the water front and as you pass certain digital makers, you will be able to hear sounds, music or a narrative...