Description

My frequent dissatisfaction with loud and/or unfitting music in coffee shops as well as my deep admiration of Brian Eno’s album Music for Airports led me to create this application.  It provides a dynamic ambient experience by monitoring the average decibel level in a space and matching it in terms of volume and complexity.

The application pulls from a database of different tracks, causing new compositions to be heard as tracks are cued randomly. This means that a song is always a variation of itself every time it is played.  The application also features unique track types that can be assigned distinct uses such as sonic branding/identification for commercial use.

Another configuration of the application could pull from a database of songs instead of individual tracks of a composition.  Songs would be categorized according to their intensity (volume and complexity), and thus, triggered in accordance to the volume of the space.

While the application was developed with a commercial use in mind, it could easily be applied toward more experimental and conceptual installations.

View Demo

Operation

The blue bar on the far left displays the current decibel level. The orange bar displays the average decibel level. As the average decibel level increases, more audio tracks are automatically triggered and played simultaneously. The “spike” track is slightly different in that it is cued by a 90% spike in the current decibel level (blue bar). This incorporates any sudden sonic anomolies into the soundtrack by immediately matching them with an audio ‘flourish’.

The ‘Brand Melody’ is distinct and can be programmed to be cued at certain points as a more informational sound: top of the hour notification, a brand melody, etc.

For the purpose of the above-pictured prototype, tracks can be manually triggered by clicking any of the buttons with the track names. This cues the track as though the average decibel level had reached a track’s triggering point.

This prototype is optimized for testing and demonstration. Actual implementation would include a multitude of tracks, created by a talented musician. Microphone placement and sensitivity would also be callibrated to the playback space.

Proposal Document

Tags: audio, environment, flash, interaction, music, sound

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