Listen to London

3D positioned aurally immersive London.

This Binaural 3D Positioned realtime sound system allows the player/user to participate in a 3D positioned sound experience as they navigate London or any mapped urban space.

‘Hear voices as you navigate London, voices that are spacially situated and remain situated as you turn your head. Voices call you to locations, to engage in games, experience music or to tell you something interesting. Voices are faint at first and grow in strength as you move towards them. You cannot see where they come from so you must follow your ears.’

Product
• Headset
• GPS (positioning/ Iphone handset)
• Compass for directionality (positioning/ Iphone handset)
• Binaural recording systems (User-Generated)
• Real-time 3D audio engine

Service
• A web based 3D spacial mapping of London
• Sound elements, games and a web enabled user generated content upload system

How this works?
You can place the voices or sound elements in London by navigating through and attaching sound elements to the 3D digital sceneography available when you subscribe. As the listener then moves around London, sound output is re-computed according to the position and direction of a listener.

This concept generates binaural audio in real time. Meaning the ʻplayer can move freely around London and the product procedurally uses an HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) and other algorithyms to compute how sound sources should change relative to the playerʼs movements in real time.ʼ

Scenarios of use
1) Sound Tagging: The poster shows Teri listening to the voice of a tree, If Teri walks away from the tree the voice will fade, if Teri walks to the left of the tree the sound will come from her right this demonstrates how the concept differs from a simple 3D soundtrack.

2) Alternatively sound tags can be attached to very specific elements such as paving stones and cracks. London can be transformed into an aurally enhanced playground of sorts making your commute more interesting.

3) Haunt your friends, convince them they are crazy, leave messages or music where your friends might hear them, or leave reminders for yourself.

Conceptual design project for HighWire DTC