Aisen Caro Chacin’s Echolocation Headphones offer bat vision to her audience – converging beams of ultra sound bounce of surfaces in the environment providing an intuitive but precise form of audio navigation that, aside from its aesthetic an ludic qualities, could also potentially be useful for blind people.
Owen Chapman explores the relationship between field recording and environmental awareness. He presents a mobile sound-mapping and soundscape project focused on an abandoned stretch of urban wilderness in Montréal.
Jean Cristofol challenges the dichotomy between map and probe with the idea that the latter, arguably, generates its own cartography.His paper provides an articulation between these two modes of audio mobility leading him to question the validity of traditional boundaries and geographical limits.
Laurent Di Biase proposes what might be considered as a practical embodiment of this idea. In a project produced during a residency leading up to the Locus Sonus symposium – Four Mobile Tracks – the path becomes the score as performers stream audio from the outside urban environment which Di Biase remixes live in the auditorium.
Murmures Urbains, by Emmanuel Guez and Xavier Boissarie, is a piece that generates a “theatre without walls” using instruction based protocols, developed on the platform Message situés. By delivering audio instructions, the project transforms the listener into a performer inviting him to play with social norms in public spaces.
Steve Jones renews the role of the busker by building on the accessibility and portability of mobile phones. The smart phone or tablet, like a harmonica that you carry in your pocket, becomes an instrument to accompany the wanderings of the contemporary “troubadour”.
Jérôme Joy discusses displacements in the acoustic environment in terms of musical practice; ways of activating or modulating the sound environment through our movements and (inter)actions.