73,569 research outputs found

    Sonic City: Prototyping a wearable experience

    Get PDF
    Sonic City is a project exploring mobile interaction and wearable technology for everyday music creation. A wearable system has been developed that creates electronic music in real-time based on sensing bodily and environmental factors - thus, a personal soundscape is co-produced by physical movement, local activity, and urban ambiance simply by walking through the city. Applying multi-disciplinary methods, we have developed the wearable from a scenario-driven, aesthetic and lifestyle perspective. A garment has been crafted for 'trying on' interaction and wearabilty options with users on-site in the city. With this prototype, we have been able to expore and rapidly iterate context and content, social and human factors of the wearable application

    Summary of Sonic Boom Rise Times Observed During FAA Community Response Studies over a 6-Month Period in the Oklahoma City Area

    Get PDF
    The sonic boom signature data acquired from about 1225 supersonic flights, over a 6-month period in 1964 in the Oklahoma City area, was enhanced with the addition of data relating to rise times and total signature duration. These later parameters, not available at the time of publication of the original report on the Oklahoma City sonic boom exposures, are listed in tabular form along with overpressure, positive impulse, positive duration, and waveform category. Airplane operating information along with the surface weather observations are also included. Sonic boom rise times include readings to the 1/2, 3/4, and maximum overpressure values. Rise time relative probabilities for various lateral locations from the ground track of 0, 5, and 10 miles are presented along with the variation of rise times with flight altitude. The tabulated signature data, along with corresponding airplane operating conditions and surface and upper level atmospheric information, are also available on electronic files to provide it in the format for more efficient and effective utilization

    Listening in to others : in between noise and silence

    Get PDF
    Since the launch of the ‘Clean Delhi, Green Delhi’ campaign in 2003, slums have become a significant social and political issue in India’s capital city. Through this campaign, the state, in collaboration with Delhi’s middle class through the ‘Bhagidari system’ (literally translated as ‘participatory system’), aims to transform Delhi into a ‘world-class city’ that offers a sanitised, aesthetically appealing urban experience to its citizens and Western visitors. In 2007, Delhi won the bid to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games; since then, this agenda has acquired an urgent, almost violent, impetus to transform Delhi into an environmentally friendly, aesthetically appealing and ‘truly international city’. Slums and slum-dwellers, with their ‘filth, dirt, and noise’, have no place in this imagined city. The violence inflicted upon slum-dwellers, including the denial of their judicial rights, is justified on these accounts. In addition, the juridical discourse since 2000 has ‘re-problematised slums as ‘nuisance’. The rising antagonism of the middle-classes against the poor, supported by the state’s ambition to have a ‘world-class city’, has allowed a new rhetoric to situate the slums in the city. These representations articulate slums as homogenised spaces of experience and identity. The ‘illegal’ status of slum-dwellers, as encroachers upon public space, is stretched to involve ‘social, cultural, and moral’ decadence and depravity. This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of everyday life in a prominent slum settlement in Delhi. It sensually examines the social, cultural and political materiality of slums, and the relationship of slums with the middle class. In doing so, it highlights the politics of sensorial ordering of slums as ‘filthy, dirty, and noisy’ by the middle classes to calcify their position as ‘others’ in order to further segregate, exclude and discriminate the slums. The ethnographic experience in the slums, however, highlights a complex sensorial ordering and politics of its own. Not only are the interactions between diverse communities in slums highly restricted and sensually ordained, but the middle class is identified as a sensual ‘other’, and its sensual practices prohibited. This is significant in two ways. First, it highlights the multiplicity of social, cultural experience and engagement in the slums, thereby challenging its homogenised representation. Second, the ethnographic exploration allowed me to frame a distinct sense of self amongst the slums, which is denied in mainstream discourses, and allowed me to identify the slums’ own ’others’, middle class being one of them. This thesis highlights sound – its production, performances and articulations – as an act with social, cultural, and political implications and manifestations. ‘Noise’ can be understood as a political construct to identify ‘others’ – and both slum-dwellers and the middle classes identify different sonic practices as noise to situate the ‘other’ sonically. It is within this context that this thesis frames the position of Listener and Hearer, which corresponds to their social-political positions. These positions can be, and are, resisted and circumvented through sonic practices. For instance, amplification tactics in the Karimnagar slums, which are understood as ‘uncultured, callous activities to just create more noise’ by the slums’ middle-class neighbours, also serve definite purposes in shaping and navigating the space through the slums’ soundscapes, asserting a presence that is otherwise denied. Such tactics allow the residents to define their sonic territories and scope of sonic performances; they are significant in terms of exerting one’s position, territory and identity, and they are very important in subverting hierarchies. The residents of the Karimnagar slums have to negotiate many social, cultural, moral and political prejudices in their everyday lives. Their identity is constantly under scrutiny and threat. However, the sonic cultures and practices in the Karimnagar slums allow their residents to exert a definite sonic presence – which the middle class has to hear. The articulation of noise and silence is an act manifesting, referencing and resisting social, cultural, and political power and hierarchies

    Review: Sonic Histories of Cork City

    Get PDF

    Listening and remembering: networked off-line improvisation for four commuters

    Get PDF
    This paper analyses the experience of the networked off-line improvisation 'Listening and Remembering', a performance for four commuters using voices and sounds from the Mexico City and Paris metros. It addresses the question: how can an act of collective remembering, inspired by listening to metro soundscapes, lead to the creation of networked voice- and sound-based narratives about the urban commuting experience? The networked experience is seen here from the structural perspective (telematic setting), the sonic underground context, the ethnographic process that led to the performance, the narratives that are created in the electro-acoustic setting, the shared acoustic environments that those creations suggest, and the technical features and participants' responses that prevent or facilitate interaction. Emphasis is placed on the participants' status as non-performers, and on their familiarity with the sonic environment, as a context that allows the participation of non-musicians in the making of music through telematically shared interfaces, using soundscape and real-time voice. Participants re-enact their routine experience through a dialogical relation- ship with the sounds, the other participants, themselves, and the experience of sharing: a collective memory

    Networked Migrations: Listening to and performing the in-between space (Paper)

    Full text link
    Two internet-based sonic performances, Letters and Bridges (between Leicester and Mexico City), and Migratory Dreams (between London and BogotĂĄ), were developed by the artist with the leading question of what the 'in-between' space (Bhaba 1994; Ortega 2008) sounds like in the context of migration. Drawing on a Deep Listening (Oliveros 2005) practice, the artist undertook pre-performance workshops as a way to engage participants in the possibilities of travelling in time and space, and expressing through voice and other sounds feelings that arise when they migrate. The sharing of these sounds through the Internet in real time opened the idea of territory and allowed participants to express feelings towards place, identity and belonging, and to create mixed-reality narratives, within a supportive sound space free from geographical and cultural constraints. High quality bi-directional streaming audio software such as SoundJack and Tube Plug were used, adapted to the performance needs. This paper describes the process of the creation of each performance, considering its sonic, narrative, mediatised and performative aspects, offering a reflection on new auditoriums created for migrants' expression of their experiences in the 'in-between'. It argues that this specific approach helps migrants to expand their sense of space and develop an awareness of their multidimensional condition through sound

    Soundwalk as a multifaceted practice

    Get PDF
    The soundwalk was invented as part of the initiatives undertaken by the World Soundscape Project group with an acoustic ecology profile, which emphasised the noise pollution that exists in people’s sonic environment and the need to reacquire our ‘lost skill’ of conscious listening. Initially, the practice of soundwalking was used as a method allowing us to ‘hone our hearing’ (to boost our sonological competence), to show the human condition with respect to modern reality. Soon, the soundwalk became an inspiration for many artistic undertakings that made use of the sonic properties of the environment and employed various listening strategies. This article is designed to present the idea of soundwalking since its theory and practices began to form. By presenting selected works by Hildegard Westerkamp, I intend to show the motivations behind the practice of soundwalking, which encompass the complex issues of perceiving and assessing city sounds. I refer these to Tim Ingold’s proposition to understand sound as a medium of experience. Soundwalking, as a practice of conscious listening by focusing attention on aural sensations, paradoxically seems to reveal the multi‑sensory structure of our relationship with the world, and the mediatory function of sound in our experience of being‑in‑the‑world

    Sonic fields

    Get PDF

    Economic benefits of supersonic overland operation

    Get PDF
    Environmental concerns are likely to impose some restrictions on the next generation of supersonic commercial transport. There is a global concern over the effects of engine emissions on the ozone layer which protects life on Earth from ultraviolet radiation. There is also some concern over community noise. The High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) must meet at least the current subsonic noise certification standards to be compatible with the future subsonic fleet. Concerns over sonic boom represent another environmental and marketing challenge to the HSCT program. The most attractive feature of the supersonic transport is speed, which offers the traveling public significant time-savings on long range routes. The sonic boom issue represents a major environmental and economic challenge as well. Supersonic operation overland produces the most desirable economic results. However, unacceptable overland sonic boom raise levels may force HSCT to use subsonic speeds overland. These environmental and economic challenges are likely to impose some restrictions on supersonic operation, thus introducing major changes to existing route structures and future supersonic network composition. The current subsonic route structure may have to be altered for supersonic transports to avoid sensitive areas in the stratosphere or to minimize overland flight tracks. It is important to examine the alternative route structure and the impact of these restrictions on the economic viability of the overall supersonic operation. Future market potential for HSCT fleets must be large enough to enable engine and airframe manufacturers to build the plane at a cost that provides them with an attractive return on investment and to sell it at a price that allows the airlines to operate with a reasonable margin of profit. Subsonic overland operation of a supersonic aircraft hinders its economic viability. Ways to increase the market potential of supersonic operation are described
    • 

    corecore