Testing Auditor – Sound in Motion

To halvskjeggete menn observerer og noterer.
Foto: Marianne Mathiesen

Together with Lars Nyre I have spent several days testing Auditor with 42 participants (Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything). Based on how thes users move, Auditor plays different sounds in the headphones the user is wearing. The sounds presented to the user is a complex combination of environmental sounds, sounds from a train station and fragments from different conversations. Every user is creating their own, unique sound experience based on their own movements in a space defined by Bluetooth transmitters.

Auditor is developed together with programmer Johannes Ringheim. Currently it is a prototype that uses sounds stored within a app used on iOS, but next step will hopefully be to stream content to the unit. This will open several new possibilites when it comes to how we  can combine "live, umbiquitous radio" with locative expressions and user preferences. That is, if we get the project funded. So fra we have got some funding from UH-nett Vest, but right now it seems like further funding has to be found elsewhere.

Feedback from those testing Auditor is so far positive. Most of the informants seem to think that the application gives a rich sound experience that they would like to have more of.

Lars is connecting the design and testing of Auditor to the current efforts to establish Media City Bergen and Bergen Journalism Lab.

– In recent decades media has become more and more market oriented. As scientists, we have the privilege to respond freely to this development. We can try to look ahead.. There's already a crisis in parts of the media industry. Soon there will be crisis in the radio industry as well. Maybe we can be involved in developing solutions for the future.

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