reBlogged from: design mind
Stop for a second and listen. Close your eyes, use your ears, and just listen.
Whether you are in a quiet office environment or out on a busy
street, you'll be amazed by how many sounds there are around you. Most
of us do not pay attention to the ambient sounds that surround us. Our
brains filter them out and we don't listen. Yet the sounds we miss can
be very enjoyable.
Designed Sounds
Today, what we hear in our daily lives is often designed sound- music
and sound effects carefully crafted for games, devices, and products.
For example, mission-critical products, such as heart rate monitors used
during medical surgery or a plane’s flight deck controls, use
distinctive alarming sounds that are designed to be easy to perceive and
raise a sense of urgency or danger.
In interfaces for everyday tasks, sound is used to create engaging
and beautiful experiences. Sounds can generate a special feeling or
underline brand identity while simultaneously providing cues that a
command has been received by the system. Most smart phones today come
with subtle sounds that indicate the pressing of a touch screen’s
virtual buttons. Since there is no way to feel if a virtual button has
been pressed, the sounds reinforce the action for the user. Another
example can be found in industrial design, where the latest electric
cars are being designed with artificial motor sounds. The sounds alert
pedestrians to the car as well as reinforce the sense of driving a
powerful vehicle. These examples underline the overall trend of sound
being used to create an aesthetic experience rather than serving as
purely a functional aid to improve interaction.
Blurring the Border Between Listening and Composition
While systems and products are becoming more enjoyable and pleasant
to listen to, they are usually not intentionally designed for sound
interaction. The emergence of accessible music software on computers and
mobile devices is changing this. These programs allow for easy
modification of sound by the average user and blur the border between
listening and sound creation. The small form and limited complexity of
mobile interfaces has forced music software designers to reduce the
complexity of their products, resulting in music software that is widely
used by average mobile phone users.
Music apps are often top sellers. Popular applications allow people
to become mobile DJs, to transform sounds, and to design ringtones.
I was interested in exploring the blur between sound creation and
listening when my friend and colleague Matteo Penzo put me in contact
with Matteo Milani from the U.S.O. Project
sound art group. The ideas and compositions of the U.S.O. Project
revolve around the use of noise and ambient sound as a foundation for
sound installations and music composition. Together we wanted to create a
mobile experience that would support active listening to the everyday
sounds that surround us, making the listener a part of a personal sound
installation. Instead of creating a tool for recording and transforming
sound, we wanted to start from the sounds themselves. Our goal was to
reinforce the sounds of the listener’s environment while blending them
with more musical sounds. Together the sounds would form a unique
experience that could be enjoyed by anybody that has an interest in
sound and art.
Early Experiments
We started with a small prototype app for iOS using simple sound
algorithms to blend U.S.O. music with live recording from the iPhone
microphone. The prototype was tested with real use cases that included
listening to the app while taking a long walk as well as while sitting
at the computer in the office. We added many parameters for the user to
be able to tweak and play with the sound transformation.The parameters
were mapped to on-screen sliders and buttons and to sensors like the
accelerometer.
While doing the informal tests we found that the users were
struggling to understand the relationship between the parameters and the
sound output. Also, in most cases they would end up spending time
experimenting with the parameters to discover how they work. The visual
interface and controls were clearly distracting, taking attention away
from the app’s original goal of reinforcing ambient sounds for the
listener.
Following these early experiments, we decided to take a drastically
different approach. We limited the visual interface as much as possible
and provided a set of sound themes in the app for the listener to
select. This worked much better. All of a sudden the users would pick up
the app and, once started, would tuck it away in a pocket while
listening to the sounds. Each theme takes sounds from the microphone and
blends them with sounds composed by U.S.O. Project. The sounds are
blended using sound algorithms, unique to each theme. Each algorithm is
carefully calibrated to replicate the work and skill that goes into
producing a great listening experience.
Lis10er
The result is Lis10er
(pronounced Listener), an augmented sound installation app. Sounds are
blended from the listener’s surroundings, creating dynamic music that
changes while maintaining its identity. Lis10er provides users with a
creative way of listening to their environment and a unique experience
with every listen.
Tue Haste Andersen is Senior Software Architect based in frog’s Milan studio. Tue is a Human Computer Interaction and Computer Music
expert, with research ranging from DJ work practices to the use of sound
and music in common interaction tasks. He is also the founder and
original author of the popular open source DJ software, Mixxx.
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