By Peter Sinclair and Elena Biserna https://doi.org/10.65968/NUQE4462 voir la version française The major part of this special edition is based on the proceedings of Locus Sonus Symposium #8 Audio Mobility . The symposium assembled an international panel of artists, theoreticians…
Romain Barthélémy and Roland Cahen’s piece details the sonification of design. Their project My Smart City uses a “topohonic” approach to distribute carefully tailored sounds linked to location and task.
Frauke Behrendt presents a comprehensive taxonomy of mobile sound divided into four categories: musical instruments, sonifying mobility, sound platforms and placed sounds.
Justin Bennett reflects on his long series of audio walk projects that, spanning the last two and half decades, have “overwritten” urban space in many different ways. Experimenting with recorded sound, radio transmission and, more recently, locative media, he addresses historical, social, economical as well as environmental issues relating to specific sites.
Elena Biserna’s reflection starts with the act of walking. Her paper provides an introduction to the history of mobile-mediated listening-works from the 1980s onwards. By focusing on the redefinition of boundaries between aesthetic and everyday experiences, it considers three different ways of reshaping the relationship between the walking-listener and his/her environment.
Samuel Bordreuil takes us back to the 1980s – the days of Djs and sound systems and relates the way they conquered territories in Marseilles. In so doing, he addresses (social) commonality, sense of belonging, musical territorialization of urban space and its “dramatizing” effects.
Joel Cahen describes an example of narrative placed sound. His locative project Interzone Theatre creates a “sound based augmented reality theatre” through the mobile and personal auditorium of our headphones.
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.