The AudioNomad team is developing a series of projects over the next three years specifically designed to balance creative and conceptual endeavours with the development of technological platforms. Our principle will be to marry creative and technological approaches, working as a cross-disciplinary team that will develop the philosophical, creative and technological systems within the critical arena of public cultural events and major international electronic-arts festivals, intelligent audio systems for Museum and Education contexts and mobile navigation systems for public spaces.
The conceptualisation of innovative methods for creating sound compositions that operate geo-spatially, that are non-linear and that address the challenges of mobile ‘users’.
The development of editing and compositional interfaces, for 3D audio editing, appropriate for these new conditions. Such interfaces include gestural editing and systems appropriate for in-situ GPS tracked soundscape design (i.e. composition in the field).
One of our primary technical interests is in the development of primarily non-visual interfaces for the composition, editing and run-time virtual/augmented audio reality systems. This would include 3D haptic spatial audio editing and other gestural editing devices, voice interface editing and general research into non-linear sound compositional strategies.
The use of wireless technology for audio-data up and downloads, the use of “Pseudolite” technology for precision spatial tracking and the integration of location determination technology with mobile wireless connectivity/IT platforms.
An important outcome of this project is a powerful, flexible and robust system that is capable of generating (composing and editing) and manifesting (exhibiting and demonstrating) an innovative method for spatially distributed soundscapes.
A secondary development is research into Spatial Information of other data-forms; say images, texts and other media, allowing the system to be used (for instance to up/download geological data in- the field, etc).
A truly mobile and miniature format system obviously lacks the storage capacity for large soundscape projects, as it does the capacity to interact with changing conditions (i.e. content updates etc) or multi-user interconnectivity and associated processing.
Our aim is to develop wireless systems, which automatically update the content cache of a mobile unit dependant upon its position in the real world. Such a system would potentially allow user input and contribution to a global content database, as well as providing the basis for user interactions.
AudioNomad also has strong interest to explore and develop the potentials of remote collaborative workspace methodologies and technologies – allowing team members to work together at a distance on complex sound designs and spatial mappings.
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