Digital locative music technologies are transforming the ways in which we are able to manipulate and re-frame the meaning of architecture, landscape and art. In this note we explore and outline some of the key features that are associated with this. Defining the future possibilities and challenges that we have identified through our re-search in the area. Our work is supported by examples and critically assesses the relationship between physical and aural presence, examining the manipulation and re-framing of meaning through audio augmentation. “Is Space Audible?” [7]

Chamberlain, Alan

Hazzard, Adrian

Nottingham eTheses

Chamberlain, Alan and Hazzard, Adrian (2015) Sonifying the Scene: re-framing and manipulating meaning through audio augmentation. In: DMRN+10: Digital Music Research Network One-day Workshop 2015, 22 December 2015, Queen Mary University of London. Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32858/1/DMRN_Sonifying%20the%20Scene.pdfCopyright and reuse: The Nottingham ePrints service makes this work by researchers of the University of Nottingham available open access under the following conditions.This article is made available under the University of Nottingham End User licence and may be reused according to the conditions of the licence.  For more details see: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/end_user_agreement.pdfA note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact eprints@nottingham.ac.uk  Sonifying the Scene: re-framing and manipulating meaning through  audio augmentation Alan Chamberlain and Adrian Hazzard Mixed Reality Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham (firstname.surname)@nottingham.ac.uk   INTRODUCTION Digital locative music technologies are transforming the ways in which we are able to manipulate and re-frame the meaning of architecture, landscape and art. In this note we explore and outline some of the key features that are associated with this. Defining the future possibilities and challenges that we have identified through our re-search in the area. Our work is supported by examples and critically assesses the relationship between physical and aural presence, examining the manipulation and re-framing of meaning through audio augmentation. “Is Space Audible?! [7]. GAZING INTO SOUND Music has a long tradition of guiding the interpretation of many of our experiences; it provides accompaniments to our media, narrative performances and ceremonies. Typ-ically these are carefully composed and curated accom-paniments that integrate into and reflect the intended mood, narrative and meaning of the experience. But what about music listening in mobile or locative settings, those spaces where music is not normally situated? The work of R. Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project urged us to attend to the ambient aural environment of our physical world, to connect with and understand its physicality through its aural manifestation [5]. Subse-quently, the notion of the locative ambient soundscape has been increasingly augmented or masked by personal-ized artificial soundtracks of music as broadcast from the Sony Walkman onwards to modern smart phones. Mi-chael Bull states that iPod users ÒÔaestheticiseÕ their en-vironment through their personal stereo use [É] a re-making of the urban to fit with the users thoughts and desiresÓ [2]. Bull goes on to note that in urban commut-ing environments, the iPod is used to deliberately disrupt and re-frame the monotony of the city experience. Fur-thermore, artists have seized upon mobility and location as a platform for new artistic expression and often play-fully engage with the juxtaposition of media Ð such as audio and music Ð in contrast to the nature of the locale and artefacts contained within [1,3,5], thus to encourag-ing users to reason about such objects, landscapes or activities in a different way. Little research has sought to understand the opportunities for the deliberate manipula-tion and re-framing of the meaning of objects, artefacts and landscapes via musical accompaniments.  Hazzard et al.Õs [5] example of soundtrack work in a sculpture garden highlights the degree of manipulated meaning that music can impart upon the interpretation of objects. Here we have a setting, an external site with varied landscaped and rural parkland that has been used to exhibit a variety of sculpture exhibits. There are two layers of meaning already in play here: an artist created a sculpture with a particular intent; this artefact was then re-framed by the parkÕs curators who placed it in the setting of the park; Hazzard et al. [4] then imposed a third layer of meaning Ð an adaptive musical soundtrack Ð quite detached from the artistÕs or curators original perspective. Subsequently, visitors reported an experi-ence clearly shaped by the mood and behaviour of the accompanying music, sometimes enhancing visitor inter-pretation and sometimes perturbing it. In our second ex-ample, Rider Spoke, by the arts collective Blast Theory [3], participants were encouraged to record and leave personal narratives at specified locations in cities for others to find and listen into. Here the audio fragments encourage a re-framing of the context of the locale. Ra-ther than an anonymous alleyway or a buildingÕs facade these architectures became the backdrop to the narrative, the set from where the narrative is held and played out, the meaning of the narrative permeates and re-frames the locale.  Appreciating the wealth of such personal experiences, located in a multisensory understandings of the world and the way that these may be counterpoised against, both other experiences and physical entities allows us to further experiment and create new sonic environments that are able to open up and offer different ways to expe-rience sonified spaces that move us beyond our current conventional understandings.  CONCLUSION This small piece of writing asks for further understand-ings and re-specification of the meta-materiality and of the nature of sound and it’s relationship to the world. With new technologies emerging and opening up a space for exploring audio-augmentation it is important to see this as an opportunity for understanding the relationship between sound and space, and sonification and the sce-nic. As a leaving gesture, it’s perhaps worth thinking about how, as Ingold writes, “a landscape may be audi-ble” [4].  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We would like to acknowledge the grant Fusing Seman-tic and Audio Technologies for Intelligent Music Produc-tion and Consumption - EP/L019981/1  REFERENCES 1. Frauke Behrendt. 2012. The sound of locative media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 18, 3: 283Ð295. http://doi.org/10.1177/1354856512441150 2. Michael Bull. 2006. Investigating the culture of mo-bile listening: From Walkman to iPod. In Consuming music together. Springer, 131Ð149.   3. Chamberlain, A. et al. ÔLocating Experience: touring a pervasive performanceÕ, Personal Ubiquitous Com-puting Journal, Volume 15 Number 7 . Springer. DOI: 10.1007/s00779-010-0351-3. pp. 717-730. 4.  Tim Ingold, ÒBeing Alive: Essays on Movement,   Knowledge and DescriptionÓ,  Routledge, 2011 270 pages 5. Adrian Hazzard, Steve Benford, and Gary Burnett. 2015. Sculpting a Mobile Musical Soundtrack. Pro-ceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on Hu-man factors in computing systems, ACM. 6. R. Murray Schafer. 1993. The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Inner Tradi-tions/Bear & Co. 7. Victor Zuckerkandl , "Sound and Symbol " Vol 1, Princeton University Press, 1969, 399 pages .  Other MRL Music papers:  Alan Chamberlain & Andy Crabtree (2016) ÒSearching for Music: Understanding the discovery, acquisi-tion and organisation of music in a domestic set-ting for designÓ in Personal and Ubiquitous Com-puting Journal, Springer Steve Benford, Adrian Hazzard, Alan Chamberlain, Kev-in Glover, Chris Greenhalgh, Liming Xu, Michaela Hoare, Dimitrios Darzentas (2016) ÒAccountable Artefacts: the Case of the Carolan GuitarÓ, Pro-ceedings of the Conference on Computer Human Interaction, CHIÕ16, May 07 - 12, 2016, San Jose, CA, USA, 2016, ACM Andrew McPherson, Alan Chamberlain, Adrian Hazard, Sean McGrath and Steve Benford (2016) ÒDesign-ing for Exploratory Play with a Hackable Digital Musical InstrumentÓ, Proceedings of Designing In-teractive Systems, DIS'16, June 4 - 8, 2016, Bris-bane, Australia. ACM Press. Alan Chamberlain, Mads B¿dker, Adrian Hazzard, Steve Benford (2016) ÒAudio in Place: Media, Mobility and HCI - Creating Meaning in SpaceÓ, Proceed-ings of the 18th International Conference on Hu-man-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. September 6th - 9th, 2016 - Congress Palace, Florence (Tuscany), Italy, Mobile HCI 2016. ACM Press. Steve Benford, Adrian Hazzard, Alan Chamberlain, Kev-in Glover, Chris Greenhalgh, Liming Xu, Michaela Hoare, Dimitrios Darzentas (2016) ÒExperiencing the Carolan GuitarÓ, Proceedings of the Confer-ence on Computer Human Interaction, CHIÕ16, May 07 - 12, 2016, San Jose, CA, USA, 2016 Benford S., Hazzard A., Chamberlain A., Xu L. (2015) "Carolan: Augmenting a Guitar with its Digital Footprint.Ó International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2015), Louisiana, USA. Alan Chamberlain and Adrian Hazard (2015) Sonifying the Scene: re-framing and manipulating meaning through audio augmentation. In: DMRN+10: Digi-tal Music Research Network, December 2015, London. Hazzard, Adrian., Benford, Steve., Chamberlain, Alan.,Greenhalgh, Chris and Kwon, Hyosun (2014) Musical Intersections across the Digital and Physical. In: DMRN+9: Digital Music Research Network (EPSRC), December 2014, London.  Hoare, Michaela and Benford, Steve and Greenhalgh, Chris and Chamberlain, Alan (2014) Doing it for themselves: the practices of amateur musicians and DIY music networks in a digital age. In: DMRN+9: Digital Music Research Network (EPSRC), December 2014, London.  

Sonifying the Scene: re-framing and manipulating meaning through  audio augmentation

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Sonifying the Scene: re-framing and manipulating meaning through audio augmentation

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