soundtrack . Concept

soundtrack brings together the bird's-eye experience provided by a satellite map with an immersive and intimate feeling of a stereo sound recording.

The technique that is employed involves outdoor sound recordings made on the move ie. 'soundwalks', and GPS track-log generated during the walk. Soundwalk recordings are synchronized with relative GPS-time series coordinates taken from the track-log. This makes it possible to present the soundwalks as 'tracks' on the map, letting the user explore and interact with the sounds of a place freely through the map interface.

soundtrack is an exercise that plays on the contrast between the distanced and two-dimensional character of the map with the intimate and temporal flow of the soundscape. It breaths life into the once dead and static map, by overlaying it with the liveliness and dynamism of the soundtrack. In the meantime, it imposes a dimension of rationality onto the soundtrack by laying it bare and flat on the Cartesian grid of the map. In this paradoxical duality, the user is immersed in the place of the map by hearing it, while maintaining the all-seeing and ever-present 'God's-eye' mode of vision that works against this subjective and ephemeral presence.

soundtrack is open to user contributions. Please click on the 'Contribute' link if you want your sound recordings to appear on this site.

Click 'Play' to begin exploring soundtrack. Please note that DSL or faster connection is recommended due to the large size of audio files. If you do not see the map, please update your browser to either IE7 or Firefox-2. Also make sure you have Quicktime installed to play audio.

 

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