Space and Interaction: when Composers meet Tool developers
“I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.” ― Edward Albee (born 1928), American playwrighter.
It is not enough or locativeaudio tools to provide geolocation and the technology to associate audio to a place. They needs to provide aggregators and composers with a tool which could make a city worth of living in it, so that Edward Albee could stay anywhere and everywhere.
Our preocupation for space: Locativeaudio and the NOVARS Research Centre have a strong tradition of exploring Space as a core compositional paramenter when writing electroacoustic music and performing at the MANTIS Festival. The exploration of the asthetics of Space-Form (Smalley, 2007) alongside designing Spatial movement, spectral occupancy and diffusion have been at the centre of the composer and sonic artist's agenda. Introducing the NoTours team and the founders of Escoitar, Horacio Gonzalez Diéguez and Enrique Tomas to the NOVARS community had a huge impact on their creative endevours. noTours opened doors for creating new locative tools and compositions while connecting our Music discipline with other Manchester University projects and urban collectives such as, cities@manchester.
Geolocative Audio Tools
NoTours.org
Augmented Aurality
NoTours is an agumented aurality too for smartphones desgined by Horacio Gonzalez and Enrique Tomas. It makes use of a browser interface to design the walks on google maps and a smartphone (android only) to navigate the soundwalks with a pair of headphones. In November 2015, NoTours made their code available from Github, should you want to continue with its developement! https://github.com/noTours/
SonicMaps.org
LocativeAudio
(GPS AudioTour)
SonicMaps is a locativeaudio tool developed at the NOVARS Research Centre by Dr Ignacio Pecino when he was a PhD student. The tool incorporated aditional feautures to the noTours concept, such as editing the journey on the very spot where the walk will take place, a dynamic server to trigger audio procedurally (e.g night or day), and unity3d game engine to hear sound rendered live in 3D. Sonicmaps is also available for iOS (and Android)
Echoes.xyz
@ Hanoi Soundwalk
"Echoes" developers experienced Sonicmaps for the first time as part of our multi-city locativeaudio soundwalks which included A soundwalk in Hanoi. As a result, they decided to develop their own tool and company idea in Vietnam, which was wonderful!. Behind "Echoes" development and project concept are Mathias Rossignol (IRCAM reearcher), Josh Kopeček (former PhD at NOVARS), Đinh Lê Vân and Trí Minh (Hanoi)
Connecting Realities
Networking the Concert Hall with the Streets
LocativeAudio proposed our Tool Developers the idea of creating a concert event where the audience would start in the concert hall and will be leaving the hall progressively with smartphones to experience the journey outdoors and back. GPS data of the walkers would be live tracked and sent back to the concert hall
Here is a map of the technology workflow employed to connect the concer hall with the streets and back
Below, locativeaudio ensemble receives geopositional and visual data from street walkers, which are interpreted as a 'dynamic score'
Sonic Maps also connected the concert hall with a local park
