SONIFICATION OF YOU

Interactivity has become ambient. Individual people are no longer isolated resulting from the scaling up of networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission and reception. Various communication devices always carried are continuously emitting and receiving information. This continuous data flow is both invisible and often, by the majority of people, unknown. Today’s hand-held devices can be seen as extensions of the human body allow ubiquitous, inescapable network interconnectivity.

The ‘Sonification of You’ aims to make this data flow ‘visible’ to those people carrying the active devices. Our equipment will passively scan the various radio spectrum frequencies used by mobile phone devices, Bluetooth, WiFi networks, and others used by mobile devices, within a given space. The data information then represented by assigned audio sounds that will indicate activity, distance, and strength of signals.

Drawing on methods for monitoring large computer networks, the result is to create a background ‘sound’ for a room that is representational of the people, and their devices, present.

The invisible become audible and therefore visible. Allowing individuals to become aware of their constant connectivity.

December 2006, Live for NOMUSIC Festival X, 1-2am GMT, 13 December.

November 2006, Live at Trampoline: Platform for new media art, Broadway Cinema, Broad Street, Nottingham, UK.

September 2006, Live at Paraflows, Vienna (Austria) - documentation
Sonification of You live at Paraflows annual convention for digital arts and cultures, Viennia, Austria, 9-16 September 2006.

March 2006, Sonification of You was active for the duration of FRAMED, a Slade Centre of Electronic Media event, as part of Node.London. As part of the FRAMED Broadcasts, extracts recorded at FRAMED played on Resonance 104.4fm: 23, 24, 25 March 2006 between 1-7am, and 24 and 30 March 2006 between 7-8pm

Possible with the kind support of UCL Information System's Remote Support Team