Lalya Gaye • Outside of Dånk! • Research

Sonic City (2002-04)

Posted by Lalya on 1 October 2007⋅ Comment⋅ Share⋅  Email ⋅  Print
Tags: Augmented Reality, Everyday Creativity, Interaction Design, Locative Media, Mobile Music, physical space, Ubicomp, Urban Space

In the Sonic City project, we designed, prototyped and tested a wearable system that enabled users to create a real-time personal soundscape of electronic music by walking through and interacting with urban environments, literally turning the city into a musical instrument. With Sonic City, we explored the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic music making.

The concept behind Sonic City and its early implementation were described in [1], and the complete design process and final implementation in [2]. The results of our user study – which showed how music making can weave itself into everyday urban behaviours in a novel and creative way – are described in [3] and further discussed in [4] (see publication list below).

Realised between 2002 and 2004, Sonic City was one of the pioneer projects of the mobile music field and contributed to establishing it. The project has been well-published and well-cited in academia, received a lot of attention in the new media scene, and has received extensive media and blog coverage (El Mundo, Receiver, We Make Money Not Art, Metro, Danmarks Radio, etc). Among other places, Sonic City was presented at NIME and Cybersonica, and was demoed at UIST and the EU’s IST 2004 event. It was featured in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac special issue on locative media, discussed in a number of academic articles about sound and urban space, and was included in the book “Worldchanging: a User’s Guide to the 21st Century” as an example of future technologies for urban living (see website below for more details about presentations and coverage).

Sonic City was a collaboration between the Future Applications Lab (Viktoria Institute) where I was working at the time, and the PLAY Studio at the Interactive Institute. It was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) through the Mobile Life SSF project, by the European Union IST program through the Smart-Its project, and by VINNOVA through the IT+Textiles project. The project was realised in a multidisciplinary environment, involving collaborators with competence in product design, sound-art, sociology, cognition psychology, engineering and an architecture. Ramia Mazé and I were the project’s leaders, and I was responsible for the concept development, implementation, and user study. I also actively participated in the sound mapping design and in the wearable design.

Project Lead
Lalya Gaye (Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute)
Ramia Mazé (PLAY Studio, Interactive Institute)

Project Collaborators
Margot Jacobs (PLAY Studio, Interactive Institute)
Magnus Johansson (Interaction Design programme, IT-University in Göteborg)
Sara Lerén (Cognitive Science Programme, IT-University in Göteborg)
Daniel Skoglund (Sound-artist, formerly part of 8Tunnel2)

Official Project Website: Sonic City - Future Applications Lab

Selected Publications