www.soundcities.com

This interctive website called soundcities.com allows the audience as creative user the possibility to remix the hundreds of samples recorded from around the world and then save their own mix. Soundcities is an online database of the thousands of sounds from around the world. The website also has series on online mixing desks where you can mix these sounds. Soundcities uses city recorded soundscapes from world cities made over the last five years. All the sounds are now online also online as open source sounds. The database allows full open sourced access and listening to the individual sounds. The Database is also open so anyone can upload sounds they collect from world cities, thereby making a contribution to the project and making an online sounds archive.

LISTEN TO SOUNDS BY CITY: amsterdam, barcelona, bilbao, birmingham, brazil, bristol, brussels, cork, dresden, graz, istanbul, ljubiana, london, napoli, paris, porto, rotterdam, salzburg, san sebastian, sao paulo, uhtrect

LISTEN TO SOUNDS BY MOOD: ambient, atmosphere, beat, birds, churches, industrial, mechanical, music, noisy, people, rythm, sirens, speaking, traffic, travel, voices, weather

The sounds of cities also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities.  Cities all have specific identities, and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses in a musical way. I am interested in the sounds of specific places, and how the sounds reflect this identity and re-imposes characteristics back onto the location or environment. The aim is to create an online aural experience that evokes place, both as literal description but also developed musical composition. These sounds also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. The sounds of cities evoke memories. As globalisation fractures the identity of the city experience we start to find things that appear the same the world over. A growing labyrinth, a community of aural cityscapes and collages is now evolving online.  Rather than make a fixed artwork  cdrom this is a website that is permanently evolving for the public to engage and interact with.  A growing labyrinth, a community of aural cityscapes and sound collages is now evolving online.

Cities  included ---- sao paolo, london, paris, dresden, amsterdam, saltburg, graz, rotterdam, barcelona, san sebastian, manchester, liverpool, ljubiana, frankfurt, porto, istanbul, tokyo, shanghai, los angeles, san francisco, brussels,

 

FEATURES

- Mixing desks which allows each city to be remixed, mixing seven sounds at once

- Database version of sound cities which includes the thousands of individual sounds

- Separate interfaces allows users to upload their own sounds to the database area where other people can listen to the results. 

- The sounds are also accessible via XML, so you can connect to them and make your own interfaces to connect to the sounds.

 - The system allows users to record and send sounds to the central server database as mp3.

  -The system allows all sounds listenable online.

TO DO

  -To create interpretations of the sounds via the open source environment. Create unique interfaces to play back and listen to the sounds. Prototype online interfaces have been built online interfaces that allow you to connect directly to this system and make you own generative city mixes but these don't connect to the database yet.  A system is needed to search the xml and then create a flash front interface.

 

- Sounds can be collected by a mobile phone systems or via pdas with microphones they are then uploaded to a central server and stored for retrieval and then remixed by users at a later date.

 

- Other Interfaces to connect to the database are being built and open invitation to other artists will be made. New software devices to access the database and new composition for performance will be derived from the database.

 

SOUNDCITIES WORKS ONLINE

SONICITY webber (RE- named  AUDACITY)

Sounds are captured in real time from the street and the urban space to make an interactive interface. The sounds of cities are an emergent musicality, a developing composition. The street is an emergent musical system. Sonicity captures these sounds via a series of microphones placed on webcams. The technology uses a series of small micro wireless microphones. These sounds are uploaded to my server. This webcam sound hacker takes streamed live sounds and feeds them in my database then re - composes them. I have built online interfaces that allow you to connect directly to this system and make you own generative city mixes. A number of special generative code re- arrange these natural street sounds. This is the sound of the urban, the sound of the street. Included online is a system which allows the use of generative audio systems to play online. So the city sounds are placed in a ongoing generative environment. The result is a worldwide generative audio symphony controlled by users input worldwide. The city as a constant emergent sounds system. The city is the instrument. The street is an emergent musical system. NOTE, I have since changed the way I am apporaching this and I am using wireless sensors. SEE my 'Sensity' project.
 

SONICITY. (event)
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An further adaption  is to allow user feedback incorporating street walkers in real time using a wireless sensors  as they wander the city. The sound collected via body microphones and sensors are uploaded to a central server and remixed. Users online can hear the results as up to eight streams come in allowing the mixing of eight sounds in real time. Part of my research down at the Watershed Media Centre.

SOUNDMAPS.
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Soundmaps take the sounds and positions them to the location they where found. Here is a series of interactive soundmaps. Can be adapted for any city in the world and will grow into a multi map labyrinth based on the sounds of the street. The first versions where used in my central city project in 1998, these new versions show detailed audio relationships to the sounds of the city and its urban structure. Depending on where you are at any given time the sounds of the city are reflected back onto the network of grids and diagrams.

SOUNDCITIES CD audio
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The cd  soundcities, mixes founds sounds from world cities into a series of compositions from each city creating  compositonal interpretation of these sounds. The sounds are arranged as finished compositions into nearly 70 mins of music that forms the basis of a 'world tour'. After more than a year of editing arranging and tweaking this is now finished. Co - produced with Pelado and reworked using generative max msp software called Wavesync. All the cities as linear mixes are online as mp3s.


SOUNDCITIES SOUND PERFORMANCE .
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An audio visual performance.Soundcities has been performed at Colchester Arts Centre and Museum Tamayo Mexico , Delux, Lab AU Belguim, Digifest in Torontoand numerous other venues. I have built virtual mixing desks and each desk has its own soundbank from a series of world cities.  The sounds of world cities form the basis of a performance. These sounds are also fused with interactive images from the central city and inner city projects as well as video work. The project "soundcities" is completely made up of found sounds and soundscapes from the thousands of samples I collected. During the performance I am now using live CCTV data to create visuals. TECHNICAL NOTE: My computers need to be connected to the internet whenI make these performances as the data is live and real time.