Cross-disciplinary Frog Ltd by Ricardo Climent

sonicpathfinder. Started in 2012

SonicPathfinder is a project focused on a number of situations where humans used sound-centric techniques for pathfinding and orientation. It focuses on cultures providing a high value on non-visual modes of experiencing the world (e.g. ancient hunters, merchants, fishermen and seafarers), who relied on sound when visually-oriented tools had failed (kamals, quadrants, mariner's astrolabes or sextants). E.g. Phoenicians ‘gauged the distance to a headland concealed by fog by making a loud noise such as ringing bells and listening for the echoes’ (Kahar, 1999).

Outcomes: I understand SonicPathfinder as a vehicle to inform and lead my research towards the construction of novel grammar for composition involving dynamic media for a major interactive work inspired and informed by sonicpathfinding conclusions. A sonicpathfinding system inverts the traditional dominance of image over sound, allowing the composer to trigger mechanisms to awake audiences’ aural stimuli, as the ground for sound-based navigation. My findings are implemented on interactive work combining 3D immersive environments with physics, graphics, audio and game engines, such as blender and unity3D in combination with AudioEngines (AudioAL, Maxmsp audio engine, Csound, libpd etc).
The first implementation was in 2013 on a new work entitled [5] and built around Val del Omar's 1939's Circuito Perifonico of Valencia. This consisted on a large scale speaker system distributed across train, tram stations and markets in the city of Valencia, after the Spanish Civl war. Speakers were not only used to broadcast fascist propaganda but also to play music in public spaces and to advertise commercial products.

Sonicpathfinder (.com)

Below some 3D parts of the VSC3 I designed in Blender for "Putney" (panel by Yves Usson)

http://sonicpathfinder.com