Sonic City: the urban environment as a musical interface
NIME '03: Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Singapore, National University of Singapore, (2003)Abstract
In the project Sonic City, we have developed a system that enables users to create electronic music in real time by walking through and interacting with the urban environment. We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobilityas aninteractionmodel for electronic music making. A multi-disciplinary design process resulted in the implementation of a wearable, context-aware prototype. The system produces music by retrieving information about context anduser actionandmappingit toreal-timeprocessing of urbansounds. Potentials, constraints, and implications of thistypeof musiccreationarediscussed.