Abstract:

This paper presents The Quiet Walk, an interactive mo-bile artwork for sonic explorations of urban space. The goal of TQW is to find the “quietest place”. An interface on the mobile device directs the user to avoid noisy areas of the city, giving directions to find quiet zones. Data collected by the system generates a geo-acoustic map of the city that facilitates the personal recollection of sonic memories. The system is comprised of 3 components: a smartphone running a custom application based on libpd and openFrameworks, a web server collecting the GPS and acoustical data, and computer in an exhibition space displaying a visualization of the sound map. This open-ended platform opens up possibilities of mobile digital signal processing, not only for sound art related artworks but also as a platform for data-soundscape compositions and mobile, digital explorations in acoustic ecology studies.