Ipod Audio Archives - Digital Urban

Spaces Speak – Aural Architecture and IPod Space

Andy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:29:00 +0000

At the moment we are reading ‘Spaces Speak, are you Listening?’ by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Slater.

We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and “hear” the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.

The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture’s attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to “see” objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling.

The book is of interest in the way we both perceive and design space in terms of aural experience. Of note is when we take ourselves out of these aural spaces and surround ourselves with our own audio. As we noted in our original post, we view that our perception of urban space is based on sight, smell, sound and to some extent touch. Portable music became main stream in 1979 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman and with it came a change to the way we perceive the space around us. By filtering out the natural and man made sounds of the city we are able to immerses ourselves in a alternative reality of our choosing.

The rise of the Ipod has placed this change of perception at our fingertips and the choice of music directly affects the way we perceive the city space. In this case we are on the way to work with ‘Cowgirl’ by ‘Underworld’ on our headphones, illustrated in the movie above is the change in perception from a dull tube journey to one which is almost immersive. The mix has been kept to provide background noise as well as the audio track:

As illustrated above the use of an Ipod or other audio device changes our perception of the space around us, especially in a confined environment such as the London Tube network. However, that same theory can be applied to general urban space as the next movie below illustrates:

The movie provides an insight into how the choice of music changes our view of the urban environment. In our case it is almost immersing yourself in a real-time MTV world as we consume the urban environment accompanied by the audio track…

You can purchase Spaces Speak, are you Listening?’ from our Digital Urban Amazon Store.

The post Spaces Speak – Aural Architecture and IPod Space appeared first on Digital Urban.

Embedding Google My Maps and YouTube

Andy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:38:00 +0000

A slightly hidden feature of the new Google My Maps service is the ability to embed video directly within the map. Using the ‘edit html’ option you can simply cut and paste any embed tag from YouTube or Google Video.

The ability to include video, and therefore audio, combined with path overlays lends itself to visualising our Audio and Perception of Urban Space posts.

To recap – Our perception of urban space is based on sight, smell, sound and to some extent touch. Portable music became main stream in 1979 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman and with it came a change to the way we perceive the space around us. By filtering out the natural and man made sounds of the city we are able to immerses ourselves in an alternative reality of our choosing.

The rise of the Ipod has placed this change of perception at our fingertips and the choice of music directly affects the way we perceive the city space. In our example within Google Maps you can view our route taken with audio from the House of Love…

View our Google My Maps with embedded YouTube (click the Audio and Perception of the City layer and then play within the video)

To create your own map go to Google Maps and select My Maps.

The post Embedding Google My Maps and YouTube appeared first on Digital Urban.

Embedding Google My Maps and YouTube

Andy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:38:00 +0000

The ability to include video, and therefore audio, combined with path overlays lends itself to visualising our Audio and Perception of Urban Space posts.

To create your own map go to Google Maps and select My Maps.

The post Embedding Google My Maps and YouTube appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ipod City – Digital Audio and Perception of Place – The Tube

Andy — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:07:00 +0000

As we noted in our original post, our perception of urban space is based on sight, smell, sound and to some extent touch. Portable music became main stream in 1979 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman and with it came a change to the way we perceive the space around us. By filtering out the natural and man made sounds of the city we are able to immerses ourselves in a alternative reality of our choosing.

Still not quite sure whether to take this further but the change in the way we perceive the city is notable..

You can download a high res version of the movie (.wmv 76Mb)

The post Ipod City – Digital Audio and Perception of Place – The Tube appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ipod City – Digital Audio and Perception of Place

Andy — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:48:00 +0000

Our perception of urban space is based on sight, smell, sound and to some extent touch. Portable music became main stream in 1979 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman and with it came a change to the way we perceive the space around us. By filtering out the natural and man made sounds of the city we are able to immerses ourselves in a alternative reality of our choosing.

The rise of the Ipod has placed this change of perception at our fingertips – to illustrate this we recorded a movie with the ipod playing on our way out of work (see below):

The post Ipod City – Digital Audio and Perception of Place appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ipod Culture – Perception of Urban Space Now with YouTube Movies

Andy — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:41:00 +0000

The rise of the Ipod has placed this change of perception at our fingertips – to illustrate this we placed a webcam in our button hole, linked it to a laptop in our bag and record the sound from the ipod playing on our way to work.

The resulting movie is an insight into how the choice of music changes our view of the urban environment. In our case it is almost immersing yourself in a real-time MTV world as we consume the urban environment accompanied by the beats of a dance track. Our walking pace moves in time with the music and the environment becomes a backdrop to the video of space.

Perception changes according to the music chosen… take a look at the video and let us know any thoughts. Note the quality is mixed due to the mounting of a webcam in a jacket button hole but as a first test it gets the point across…

*****

Continuing the series we have a new movie exploring the perception of urban space and audio – this time from a train approaching the city. The music on shuffle mode is in stark contrast to the previous movie and thus creates a different perceptual view of the city.

We are still not sure where we are going with these but any thoughts are welcome…

The post Ipod Culture – Perception of Urban Space Now with YouTube Movies appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ipod Culture – Perception of Urban Space Now with YouTube Movies

Andy — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:41:00 +0000

*****

We are still not sure where we are going with these but any thoughts are welcome…

The post Ipod Culture – Perception of Urban Space Now with YouTube Movies appeared first on Digital Urban.