Locativeaudio 2013 is a collaborative project including simultaneous soundwalks, and interactive works exploring geolocative audio and media in the urban context. It is a practice-led project which investigates human interaction with cities from a sonic perspective, connecting the urban experience with the ritual of the concert hall, art gallery or museum and back.

http://locativeaudio.org

LOCATIVEAUDIO 2013 (Valencia+Network): simultaneous walks take place in the cities of Valencia, Malaga, Virginia, Gävle, Avignon, Linz, Grenoble, Volos, Hanoi, Tempere and Oxford. In Valencia we are recreating Val del Omar’s 1939-45 Circuito Perifonico.
This 2013 project is organised by the NOVARS Research Centre, University of Manchester in collaboration with the UPV – Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and Galleria Valle Orti. The 2013 edition is funded by SALC’s Research Network Fund, University of Manchester and previous editions were funded by cities@manchester

May 3 to May 10, 2013 – Sint-Niklaas (Belgium)

Within the framework of the project, A knocking bird, residents and European visitors to
Sint-Niklaas are invited to explore the city in a search for nature, together with sound artists
of notours.org and WIT Urban Team (www.wit-urbanteam.com) during a stay in Sint-
Niklaas (Belgium).

Anybody interested can apply for free travel, accommodation and meals for one week to
participate to this residency and for this event.

This alternative tour of the city, experimenting with new media and a cultural programme, are
the ingredients of this stay, including free time and time to meet the people of Sint-Niklaas.

The event offers surprising, enriching and unexpected encounters with the city of Sint-Niklaas,
its history and its inhabitants and encourages participants to reflect upon European urban
realities and the contemporary human condition in a broader sense.

Together with local inhabitants visitors will get the chance to embark on an alternative
exploration of Sint-Niklaas and learn to use the techniques and technologies of sound
recording. Memories and feelings about their respective own towns will be exchanged
between local people and visitors, exploring the local area and experiencing everyday life in
the city. Walking is perceived as an essential part of the visit and as a way to learn about the
city.

We aim to achieve together with European visitors a collective sound walk, conceived as an
alternative and non-touristic gps-audio-guide with narratives about the city, about nature
in the city and about living together, with soundscapes and the personal stories of the
participants.

No previous knowledge is required. The international event is open to everybody with
an interest in sound and the city to share memories and ideas, regardless of educational
background, knowledge, etc. The workshop is based on an exchange of experiences from the
participants’ the daily life.

The workshop, travel and accommodation expenses are covered entirely by Grundtvig,
Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.

You may request your application form
by contacting themilenaprinciple@gmail.com

Those who are 50 years and over are particularly encouraged to apply. Preference goes to
candidates who are not students, teachers or experts in this field.

Organised by Milena principle / WIT Urban Team together with noTours for the Cultural Centre
of the City of Sint-Niklaas

Supported by of Grundtvig, Lifelong Learning Programme, Education and Culture, European
Union.

Locative Audio – a film by Angela Guyton for locativeaudio.org from NOVARS Research Centre on Vimeo.

NOVARS Research Centre presents a new documentary film about the Locative Audio Project which took place in June 29th, 2012. The film is directed by Angela Guyton.
locativeaudio.org

With renewed support by Cities@manchester, Locative Audio Project 2012 explores the connections between the City (via aurally augmented CityTours) with ‘The Concert Hall’. A number of participants from the UK and abroad were invited to share their creative thinking, combining Location-based Audio and Media with game-physics-audio engine technologies often found in the production of virtual environments and games. The project collaborated with The Noise Upstairs Ensemble, which adopted the role as the ultimate Locative Audio Ensemble. The event included collaborative texts for the audioguide tour contents from a number of groups like the Whitworth Park Community Archaeology and History project at Manchester University or original writings by musicologist like Roddy Hawkins and postgraduate students in Music such as Alex Allred. Of course it includes the full support and creative energy from our great NOVARS-MANTIS Team as usual.

INVITED GUESTS for Locative Audio 2012:
Mathias Fuchs -Salford University/ Universität Potsdam, Institut für Künste und Medien
Julio d’Escrivan – Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
Frauke Behrendt – University of Brighton – Digital Media
Andrew Dolphin – Leeds Metropolitan University
Kingsley Ash – Leeds Metropolitan University
Felipe Otondo – University of Lancaster
Atau Tanaka – Goldsmiths University, London
Adam Parkinson- Culture Lab Newcastle
Iain Hetherington – Sony, Cambridge (Fall 2012)
Roddy Hawkins – University of Leeds / University of Manchester
Enrique Tomas – Austria/Notours.org
Horacio González – Galicia/ Escoitar.org
Ivica Ico Bukvic – Virginia Tech, USA – Virginia Tech Institute for Creativity, Arts & Technology (ICAT, icat.vt.edu) and Digital Interactive Sound & Intermedia Studio (DISIS, disis.music.vt.edu)
Teresa Foley- Locally Toned, USA
Iain McCurdy – Berlin / Northern Ireland
Patrick Sanan – California Institute of Technology

Benjamin Louis Mawson (http://benjaminmawson.com/):
Composer & Virtual Performance Developer working at Southampton area with noTours and geolocated technologies.

Interview on Xan Philips’ “South by Southampton”, Voice103.9 FM     25.08.2012
Audio Portrait of Southampton
Private preview, October 2012: Southampton Common.

Listen Here to the Interview

Locative Audio – a film by Angela Guyton for locativeaudio.org from NOVARS Research Centre on Vimeo.

The Locative Audio event at NOVARS Manchester covered a number of sonic-centric projects in the city of Manchester, UK, and beyond, with a focus on the concept “City as Museum /City as Instrument” through sound.

These projects took advantage of Location-based Audio and other Interactive Media and Game-Engine Technologies, combined with music composition and computer music. Composers wanted to take a step forward the way we interact with cities and people and learn from other agents who do so; e.g. historians, social enterprise leaders, developers, policy makers, archaeologists, urban planners, heritage officials, to mention a few. By combining creative forces to collage narratives and sound via soundwalks, composers and sound aggregators can also interact with other disciplines to project a new understanding of a specific place and time. Such audio-guided geo-walks may convert the city into a new ‘open hall’ to experience sound.

Our Locative Audio soundwalks were literally connected to the concert hall using standard mobile phone 3G technology and geo-location so that performers, composers and audiences will be able to interact with the city from the hall and viceversa. We had then the opportunity of releasing the first concert for noTours and Ensemble, who improvised with the actual sounds that the walkers were experiencing at that moment.

For the tours we provided a number of smartphones with GPS and 3G Sim cards with pre-loaded data.  During the walk, our app developed for this event sent the location of the participants every 4 seconds to our server. This information was available to other creators in the concert hall to create visualizations, sonifications, art works, performances, etc.

Who was behind Locative Audio?

•  A group of pople at NOVARS Research Centre, University of Manchester. Back in March 2011 who have run an experimental project in collaboration with Cities@manchester, NoTours.org, Escoitar.org and the MANTIS Festival, including our first Audioguide City tour using smartphones/GPS technology and other musical events.
  To see more details about the organising team and collaborators, click here
• In 2012 we continue to broaden avenues by inviting researchers and practitioners from around the country and beyond, to respond to the idea of combining: “The concert hall’, as an immersive interactive environment (often using physics-graphics-audio-game engines and virtual worlds) which can potentially connect with the former.

Talk with Enrique Tomás (noTours.org) and Dr Tom Hall (Anglia Ruskin University) 12-12.45pm Lord Ashcroft Building 028, via East Road Reception.

For more information: www.anglia.ac.uk/festivalweek

Experience the sound walks by joining us at Lord Ashcroft Building 028 between 1-5pm.

The Department of Music and Performing Arts’ annual Festival Week is breaking new ground this year with Radiophonica Mobile Sounds Walks as part of their calendar of events.

These Sound Walks are experienced using a mobile phone, which will be provided, and take in evocative sites around the Anglia Ruskin Campus. These range from the River Cam, to the Mill Road area including the Cemetery. Each work explores different approaches to drama and place, from Gothic horror, to natural disaster and street crime.

The project, sponsored by the University’s public arts programme Visualise, is a collaboration with Enrique Tomás of noTours.org, and uses the noTours Android mobile phone software. The software enables sounds to be triggered by GPS technology according to the location of the listener, allowing listeners to take the walk at their own pace. Everyone is welcome to come and take part in the experience.

You will be asked to leave card details as a deposit to ensure the safe return of equipment.

My visit to Southampton was awesome.  I lectured about geolocated composition during three days at the context of the University of Southampton. I have to thank Ben Mawson for his incredible support and efforts in organizing my visit.

We had a busy agenda. Everyday noTours was introduced to a different range of people. Wednesday for for students and researches, Thursday for professionals and Friday for a general audience at the Creative DigiFest of Southampton.

Some pictures next:

Some tests and demos with students and researches at So’ton University. Ben Mawson prepared a new version of his geolocated composition “Take me by the hand”, that was listened and commented with a quite positive feedback.

Students were introduced into geolocated soundwalks composition, using our platform noTours. The fact of working on a browser based frameworks makes possible to start editing since the last minute: no downloads needed.

The gardens surrounding the University of Southampton were used to geolocate the composition by Ben Mawson.

Serendipityis a sound narrative geolocated in the civil cemetery of Ceares, Gijón, Asturias. It is a fragmented story recorded in soundtracks located in this cemetery that proposes to solve a crime that took place in Gijon in the late 19th century.

The sound narrative axis is Simona Margarita’s telling, a historian specialized in feminism who is preparing a thesis on the figure of Rosario de Acuña, a mostly unknown feminist Spanish pioneer from the nineteenth century. During her research, Margarita discovers an unsolved crime happened in Gijon in 1895. It is Edgardo del Pozo, a symbolist painter protected by the Count of Goncourt, with whom it is said he has a loving relationship. Del Pozo’s corpse is found in his mansion in Gijón by his fiancee, Gemma Oldman, a Catalan anarchist who advocates for women’s rights. Through Pure Data created sounds, radio and newspaper news, quotes, poems, excerpts from interviews, documents of the era and Margarita’s telling, strollers would experience a sound drift that would set them to the political and social atmosphere of the beginnings of industrialization.

Through the stories of fictional characters based on real people from the XIX century, people living this aural experience could get closer to stories of the origins and generate a historical point of view of present times. The historical drift was written as a fragmented rizhomatic telling and localized in a non-linear way, so there will not be two identical strolls, with the aim of discussing the idea of History as a one way linear telling. The drift also proposes questions on the borders between presence and absence, past and present, reality and fiction.

More info: narrativasespaciales.wordpress.com (in Spanish)

A combination of different projects brought us to Barcelona.

I was invited to play in a mini tour with Madame Humtata, Horacio found a cheap flight from Santiago, Giga Circus took their van and drove eight hours from France, Helena Torres had time to contribute, and even more Luca surprised us attending to the workshop. We are becoming a small family. Pedro Soler was not physically there but was always around in the atmosphere. Pedro is not only friend, but a contributer, mentor…

In Barcelona we were supported by Hangar.org to do a workshop on Locative Audio with noTours. Now we can say without any doubt that it was a big success.  A great energy wasn´t interfered by Hangar, even more, they were so flexible and professional that we almost didn´t realize to be within an public institution of their size. This is unfortunately not so common.

As always, we tend to use the workshop for developing and testing new features. In this case we released a version in Catalan, solved different bugs in the app and editor, tested some features more into detail and almost finished a narrative version of noTours.

Students worked three days and understood the methodology of working with noTours. Helena Torres was so kind to explain her experiences while producing serendipia, maybe one of the most interesting works ever done with noTours. It will be premiered in March, so we promise a new post about it.

To sum up, new friends are on the noTours board and some other continue with us no matter where we go. That makes all our efforts and frustations a bit easier.

See some more photos about the workshop at Horacio´s flickr.

LABoral offers its visitors ten sound walks in which -with the use of a mobile equipped with the Android operating system- they will be able to have many different experiences in the surrounding areas of the Art Centre. The majority of these works have been produced in the Spatial Narratives workshop, held in the first week of November as part of the programme at Plataforma Cero, the LABoral Production Centre. From this Friday 25 November, they are available to the public, which will be able to discover and experience the narrative fictions proposed to them by some of the writers and visual artists who participated in this research process.

Centred on the exploration of geolocalised audio, the Spatial Narratives workshop broadens a line of work developed by the Art Centre since its very opening. Through a variety of works presented in exhibitions and other initiatives, different sound cartography proposals have been produced.

Geolocalised audio is the capacity to locate a sound in a physical space and reproduce it when the users equipped with a Smartphone or a similar device- find themselves physically present in this place. Locative audio creates virtual sound spaces superimposed over the physical world and has multiple uses: from tourist guides to targeted advertising onto navigation aids for the blind, the exchange of audio files and the reclamation of these spaces.

The Spatial Narratives programme consists of a meeting, the exhibit which is now being presented and two residencies “ one in development and the other in artistic research“ and sets out to explore the artistic, narrative and imaginative use of audio geolocalisation tools, especially the noTours platform, intersecting literature and sound.

From 17 October to 8 November, Enrique Tomás, a member of Escoitar.org and one of the main developers of this platform for the creation of sound compositions and narratives, noTours, worked at Plataforma Cero to create a version “one”, in connection with a workshop to be held at LABoral.

In addition, for an artist residency call for the production of a work, the Art Centre launched an international proposal call, which selected Helena Torres Sbarbati, who on the basis of this meeting has begun to develop her own locative audio project Serendipia [Serendipity]. Helena Torres proposes an investigation centred in Gijón which puts together an acoustic historical drift through Sucu cemetery in order to have an interactive experience, creating dialogues which build bridges between the past and present, history and personal destinies, power and territory.

AN APPLICATION BY ESCOITAR.ORG
The more than 20 participants in the workshop learned how to use the different technical resources, experiment with script writing and work with audio files in order to produce the projects which are now presented. To achieve this they used the noTours application, created by the group Escoitar.org, which utilises open source (Android) mobile devices, equipped with GPS and a digital compass for editing a place with sounds and then reproduce these contents in binaural and ambisonic audio. In this way, pieces are created which allow you to explore spaces while experiencing an augmented acoustic reality, altering the perception of the space through the overlapping of one or more sound layers.

Escoitar.org is a collective of artists, researchers and engineers involved in analysing and working with sociological phenomena through sound landscaping. They started their joint enterprise with the construction of a sound file map of Galicia and then later went on to diversify their activities into other areas consistently in the intersections where performance, musicality and social matters meet through listening. At LABoral they presented noTours, 2009, a stroll around Cimadevilla, produced for the exhibition El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno [The Past in the Present and the Foreign in the Self].

PROJECTS PRODUCED AT LABoral
All of the sound walks presented below have in common the redefinition of space through sound and the construction of stories in new landscapes. The public will be able to access the documentation in the lobby at LABoral and then embark on the proposed tours in the vicinity of the Art Centre.

DePoética espacial [Spatial DePoética]. Cristina Moreno García­a, Olalla Hernández, David Aguilar Sánchez
The project proposes to dislocate audio from an exhibition conceived for LABoral´s interior spaces, Experimental Station, and relocate it to the outside of the Art Centre with the intention of creating a poetic image on the partial and disorientated perception of a whole. With this experiment DePoética juxtaposes the intimacy connoted by enclosed space with the extroversion and unmanageability of open space.

LABerinto [LAByrinth]. Enrique Tomás
Developed as a test for the participants in the encounter, the project is a labyrinth of invisible walls. To find the exit and treasure (a sound poem), it is necessary to be guided solely by hearing in order to sense the limits of sound. Lacking visual references, the visitors find they need to walk very slowly while a voice guides them. LABerinto [LAByrinth] is therefore a real exercise in navigation by sound. A blind walk. A demonstration that sometimes the best way to find your way is by closing your eyes. www.ultranoise.es

159 Otro sonido posporno es posible [Another Post-porn Sound is Possible], Lilia Villafuerte; Alejandra Pérez; Isabel Espín; Helena Torres
The exploration of post-porn sound, something which has yet to be categorised, raises expectations of making possible a playful space for meaning creation. The main variables of this proposal are territory, sound and movement through space. By not having rigid narrative lines, the space appears defragmented and the passers-by form unique experiences.

Parking. Julie Faubert
A sound experiment that attempts to articulate the body’s movement, cars journeying and a sound ambience made up by real sounds (recorded in the actual car park outside LABoral) and fictional ones (which come from other spaces). The sound acts as a magical tool which allows you to move between the real, imaginary and fictitious spaces.

Les mots des animaux. Juego de comprensión transgeneracional [The Words of Animals. Transgenerational Game] Fred Adam and Verónica Perales
Les mots des animaux [The Words of Animals] is a simple game of sound association. It has been produced with the help of a 4-year-old girl (Kotodama) who has reproduced the sound of each animal and made a drawing for each one of them. The goal of the players is to guess which animal corresponds to each sound. In doing this they are helped by a file showing the drawings of the animals and a clue about the letters that form its name.

En tu ausencia [In Your Absence]. Lilia Villafuerte
En tu ausencia [In Your Absence] is a sound object, abandoned and invisible with a radius of 30 metres. Discovered during the week of research in the Spatial Narratives workshop at LABoral, this vestige of human presence is located exactly at the following coordinates: Latitude 43.525219 (N), Longtitud -5.611 (W). Like a poetic entity in itself, its structure is made up by layers of sounds. These represent small details cast by the presence of “someone”. All of the pieces build up a whole of “who” went through space leaving behind his or her traces.

Space Track. Luca Rullo
Space Track suggests a spatial tour, using public transport. To be precise, line 1 which goes to LABoral. It leaves from Gijón en route to LABoral in a space shuttle; land space is left behind, crossing over the boundaries of the space launch station and as it travels, spaces and close senses are transformed on the basis of sound.

noTours Cimadevilla (2011 version). Escoitar.org
This stroll around Cimadevilla was produced in 2009 for the El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno [The Past in the Present and the Foreign in the Self] exhibition held at LABoral. Two and a half years later, the Escoitar.org group renovated its project, realized under the Mscape platform, and adapted it to noTours for Android telephones. The walk deals with the historical memory of a mythical inhabitant of Cimadevilla (Pepe Bajamar) whose songs narrate the changes his neighbourhood has undergone, its illustrious locals and its legends, intertwining this content with the sound landscape and the reality today.

Serendipia [Serendipity]. Helena Torres
A historical fiction story in the detective genre is the guiding thread of the walk which seeks to discover the temporal matter that makes up a physical space, and the relevance of sound in the perception of our surroundings, stimulating the involvement of the public with the physical context. This project has been developed over an artist residency at LABoral Centro de Arte and will be presented to the public throughout 2012.

AR Route (Ruta Anarquista) Anarchist Route and Tactical AR Tools. Mariano Maturana and Consol Rodríguez from Turismo Táctico, in collaboration with Sander Veenhof
Two augmented reality projects built by the Layar platform, with which the collective continues its TacticalTools series of interventions in the public space using AR technology for mobile devices.

http://www.turismotactico.org/marianomaturana/?p=154

La máquina de escribir de Google Maps [The Google Maps Typewriter]. Marc Antoni Malagarriga i Picas
A writing application using “geoglyphs”, the letters found in Google Maps views. The alphabets which are used are formed by live writing characters, sensitive to space/time.

http://tinyurl.com/geoglifs

http://www.tinyurl.com/artDbutxaca/

Re_colectors [Re_collectors]. Colectivo Y1m [the Y1m Collective] (Ester Barreto, Pedro Coelho, Pedro Dias and Enric Carreras)
Emerging figure in Barcelona’s public space. In the context of the crisis in which we find ourselves, the scrap metal collector is living in poverty-stricken and precarious conditions. The project consists in documenting the rounds they make all over the city, looking for scrap metal.
With the participation of: ACVic

http://mapes.hangar.org/ReColectors/

Mapa mudo [Mute Map]. Sandra García i Piñero with the collaboration of Roc Parés, Joan Llabata (Rez) and Lluís Gómez i Bigordà.
A reflection on silence, tranquility and serenity.
The mute map is an application for Android devices which makes it possible to add the silences and instantaneously make them available for viewing on the net.

http://www.sandragarciaphoto.com/mobile-app/mapamut

New visit to our friends of Anglia Rusklin University in Cambridge and NOVARS in Manchester.

The plan was double: introducing noTours to the Music Technology Department of the Anglia Ruskin University and presenting the new features of our platform to NOVARS composers.

After meeting Bronac Ferran, who has invited us to start a noTours project in the context of Visualise in Cambridge,  I introduced noTours to Tom Hall and Till Bovermann (artist visiting the department and developing an interesting project using Beta Blocker). I had the opportunity of making some demos that you see in the photos (by Till). I always had the support of Julio d´Escrivan that is the real iniciator of all these things happening in Cambridge.

I am so glad that the Southampton based composer Benjamin Mawson came and shared with us some of his work. Benjamin composes digital music that could not be played by humans, focusing on virtual environments and spatialization of sound sources.  I think we soon will organize something together!

The plan for the moment in Cambridge is the composition of a soundwalk in collaboration with the Music Technology Department and his students. The process will follow our methodology: workshop+production+exhibition.

Julio and me (just like pilgrims) arrived Manchester on Wednesday evening. He had to play and premiere some of his live electronics works and I was going to meet some NOVARS composers that I worked with last June. I introduced some of the improvements that Horacio and me have done in the last months. Many of them were actually requests from these composers so we kind of closed the circle.

The visit was again amazing. Incredible people working there. The conclusion was that we wanted to work more together (let´s see how…).

One more station for noTours this month: Kiblix Festival in Slovania.

noTours will develop a 1 day workshop for the creation of a sound intervention in the surroundings of the festival venue!

If you want to join please fill the registration form here.

the Milena principle collective is presenting noTours in the E-Culture Fair of Hasselt during 16th and 17th of November. The idea is the reconstruction of the walk produced in S.M.A.K. Ghent in the vecinity of the Fair. Audience is called to walk with us for enjoying the experience and discover noTours.

e-culture fair 2011 trailer from E culture fair 2011 on Vimeo.

Full information (in Flemish) can we found at E-Culture Fair website.

noTours is an official “Artist in Residence” from 17/10 until 8/11 in Laboral, Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón – Asturies – Spain.

This “Artist in Residence” period finishes with an encounter at the same center with other developers, artists, creatives, etc working on the same field. Dates are from November the 1st until the 5th.

As LABoral says:

Locative audio consists in the capacity to locate a sound in a physical space and reproduce it when the users –equipped with a smartphone or any other device that has GPS and an audio file player – find themselves in the designated place. Although it is quite clear that its usefulness is wide-ranging –from tourist guides to even navigation aids for the blind– the aim of this project is to develop sound and narrative art works through the meeting of producers, sound artists and writers.

http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/actividades/narrativas-espaciales

This Geolocated Audio meeting has a resident wiki (although it is all in Spanish).

From our noTours perspective this Artist in Residence is another official public support for the further development of the tool and its projection to new uses.  Our objectives for this period is fixing some parts of the code and developing a new layer of abstraction that could allow the development of complex narratives (let´s say geolocated audiogames). By the moment our expectations for arising this targets are very optimistic.

noTours White Walk (2011) from enrique tomas on Vimeo.

This year´s Manchester Mantis Festival was dedicated to the concept of  ‘Sonic Meta-­‐ontology‘, encapsulating a number or newly created compositions, sonic events, plus binaural and ambisonics field-­‐recording trip
compositions across the City of Manchester and the North West of England. ‘Manchester’s Sonic Meta-­‐ontology‘ explores whether there is really such thing as a ‘Manchester sound’ and if so, what is it, can we experience it, and can we understand it? Substantive empirical investigation takes place in partnership with local agents and artists in the region, who are looking into the creation, identity, and survival of the real truth of Manchester’s Sound.

Fancy to know your city through sounds rather than visuals? Then this event was for you.

Six MANTIS composers and NOVARS Resident Artists have joined forces to create the first ever MANTIS Audioguide Tour with out platform: noTours!
 

This prototype experience (hopefully more to come!) have presented a number or compositions and soundwalks across Manchester’s city centre.

Let me giving you some more details about these works:

Peterloo (2011) Mark Pilkington (audioguide version)
A 5.1 acoustmatic piece based on the historic event that happened in Manchester UK in 1819. The piece is a sonic reflection of the events that unfolded on that fateful day in August. A peaceful social protest of 60,000 people gathered at St. Peters field Manchester to represent to the nation that ordinary people had the right and ability to discuss social reform issues in public. A political standpoint for citizenship, that would inspire a change that would give people the right to vote for political change. Unfortunately what transpired was a miscarriage of justice in which the local authority ordered troops to disperse the crowd resulting in the Peterloo Massacre in which 15
people lost their lives and 300 people were injured. The piece is in-­‐respect to the people who died on that day and the effects it had on changing the face of political balance within the UK as we know it today. With the help of historian Robert Poole, University of Cumbria and the Peoples Museum Manchester, I have managed to acquire historical factual information in order to accurately convey the sound events as they happened. The sonic material are transformations of recordings made at the recent students protest that happened in Manchester 2011.

Sounds Like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event took place at The Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) Research Institute, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge) on 17th May 2011, Organised by Frauke Behrendt.

noTours was present at the Conference with a big success of feedback, opinions and future expectations.

I just want to leave some photos and saying thank you very much at the organisers and the speakers.

“Poetry and literature will come to you, by moving yourself through the world.”

After our soundwalk in Ghent I asked the poet Geert Vermeire, active partner in the project, to describe his experience while creating and listening the geolocated poetry walk.  The next lines (by Geert) condense his thoughts.

noTour Gent, geolocated poetry

Poems and literature are gateways to other worlds, they move you to other places via the mind. noTours is inversing this.  Poetry and literature will come to you, by moving yourself through the environment.

Audio of the walk:

— Which project have you developed in Ghent?

We created (no)Tour Gent. It is a pilot project for S.M.A.K., the City Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, Belgium and is created by the Milena principle and Escoitar.org (Stefaan van Biesen, Geert Vermeire and Enrique Tomas).  The project involves creative contributions of teenagers with workshops about locative media, sounds and artistic interventions in the urban environment.

– Can you describe noTours?

noTours is an application for Android smartphones with a web based software platform that allows you to attribute sounds to locations by using GPS technology. The application and contents with sounds and gps references are downloaded on your personal device. Sound recordings are activated when you approach the locations. Once you switch on the device you only need to walk. You are surrounded by soundscapes which come and go according to your movement through the city or the landscape.

– Can you describe the work a little more?

This project is a pilot of a new way of working with noTours, including as well creative writing. Workshops with young people lead to soundwalks realized in cooperation with writers, visual artists and sound artists.

The walk made for S.M.A.K. is a sound experience based on geolocated poetry. This approach transcends working with layers of (imaginary) narratives. It uses the urban landscape as a surface on which site specific poetry is written. All of this in the atmosphere of the dérive, spontaneous walking and exploration of the environment through augmented reality.

The inauguration of the sound walk in Ghent was as well combined with performances by visual artists (WIT/ Stefaan van Biesen, Margot Dieleman and Eric Windey) about writing and sound. These performances were actions in complete silence by the artists walking without a predefined route through the park. It was a visual counterbalance to listening to poetry and to soundscapes. Voices, sounds and in situ created images interacted together and spread their poetic layers on the surrounding environment.

– After your experience, what do you expect for the future?

Our intention is to offer more workshops and more soundwalks in the near future, in which the relation between poetry, image and sound, will be developed and elaborated, using noTours as a creative tool.

Various scenarios can lead to a poetic exploration of a city or the environment. The presence of poetry becomes a physical experience with the voices of poets you can almost touch wherever you are. Letters about or stories related with the presence of historical or actual poets on certain places, next to their poems, letters or other literary texts written at or about certain locations can be heard at the exact spot. During listening you can fully enjoy and observe the environment. The device activates the sounds and texts connected with the location, just by approaching.  A cooperation with sound artists or composers leads to a multidimensional hearing experience which transforms the walk as well to an artistic event.

– Why did you work in Ghent?

Ghent was one of the first European cities bringing poetry in the urban environment. The city created a poetry route with 20 poems as early as in 2000, a joint initiative by the Flemish Poetry Center and S.M.A.K. The visualization of the poetry in the streets was conceived by artists. Approach was to relate design and presentation of the poems in an interaction with the environment. Geert Vermeire, one of the creators of (no)Tour Ghent, joined the project team at an early stage, and created an artistic walk within this project. In cooperation with Graffiti,  a major national association for youth and culture, S.M.A.K. and the Flemish Poetry Center he designed various artistic and interactive walks inspired by the dérive and and by listening experiences throughout the city, adding 15 more site specific poems to the route, all written by teenagers.  The experience was about walking, spontaneous interaction with the city, exploring an interior world and the urban environment by using the senses and by listening, withpoetry as a living medium and in a dynamic dialogue with sound and image.  These walks were inaugurated in 2001 and are still going on.

The project (no)Tour Gent in 2011 explores new approaches to and broadens the horizon of this older format, continuing the tradition and the innovative attitude of S.M.A.K. Interdisciplinary projects connecting ‘word and image’ and their pioneering in art projects in the public space made the museum famous throughout Europe.

S.M.A.K. City Museum of Contemporary Art & Citadel Park Ghent.

An art educative project by the Milena principle/WIT (Geert Vermeire, Stefaan van Biesen, Margot Dieleman, Eric Windey) and Escoitar.org.

Stefaan van Biesen (the Milena principle/WIT) gathers around 10 am seven children, enjoying the sunshine, on the steps of the museum. It is clear that they already know each other and they day begins with happy talking around the tables in the hall, where the electronic material is displayed.

On the program in the morning they get an introduction in the recording and editing of sounds, although only one computer is available. Because of this and the relatively short time – though the biggest distraction is especially because of each other – they were soon looking forward to make recordings and soundscapes. A short visit to the museum opens with the one-liner of guard Ronny: “Do you have a ticketjeee?”. Filip also shows us his musical tricks. Stefaans adds a beat on the words of Filip, animating the children. Then the children brainstorm individually. Ideas, words, sounds raise spontaneously, ready to use for their soundscape. Sound is connected with origami and soon small boats and small kites float through the entrance hall. When they are finished with playing they get a brief explanation of what will happen in the
afternoon and lunch arrives (too early).

At 1:20 p.m. the children wait already, shouting that the artists are late.In fact two more artists (Eric and Margot) join the team and arrive together with Filip. The latter gives a creative tour of the exhibition of Macchi and Sailstorfer. Both exhibitions are very accessible for a child’s imagination and the creativity of the children is set in motion without effort.

About forty-five minutes later the group is going to the park to search for sounds to be used in the end result: an appealing sound walk with soundscapes. First of all, the children let float some of their paper boats with words and ideas. The sound of the water and the ducks are recorded. It was asked to the children to bring their mobile phone to make recordings. Not every child had a phone, so they learned to listen and together with the others they make recordings. The first sound that fascinates them is the gasp of an old dog. And so everything started. The next appealing sound that reaches the ears of the children is the bell of the ice cream cart, all are tempted. Stefaan invites all the children for an ice cream.

Afterwards the children continue their exploration of sounds and discover their own voice. Original melodies and rhythms are resonating through the afternoon. After the walk we return to the hall of the museum to listen to the recorded sounds. The children choose their favorite sounds and out of lack of time, the team will create soundscapes with this material later and integrate it in a sound walk. The children will return to listen to it on on Heritage Day on May 1st. Until next week!

Report : Nina Beghin, trainee of the Public Programme, S.M.A.K.  translated by Geert Vermeire.

You can see a graphical report (in Flemish) in this pdf.

All this in collaboration with The Milena Principle and SMAK.

In our workshops we start presenting the project noTours in the context of our experience (now for 5 years) in Escoitar.org. During 3 or 4 days we introduce our students to the use of microphones and recording devices, even building their own binaural and contact mikes. And we don´t forget the theoritical aspects lecturing about the soundwalks format and introducing what are called called aural studies.

The final objective of the workshop is composing a noTours soundwalk with the students, while they understand the practical and phenomenological issues and concepts of our field.

In Tallin our workshop was organized by the National Contemporany Art Museum KUMU in collaboration with the Art Academy of Tallinn. Our students were mainly undergraduate Bachelors and some teachers of the Music Academy and the Faculty of Humanities (Anthropology).

After introducing our project we went straight to the point of testing the experience of noTours, going out for walking although the weather conditions were really against us. We discussed a lot about the soundscape of Tallinn. Their soundmarks and remarkable noises. In particular descriptions of sounds of trams, sirens of boats, people talking loud, parties, etc. That together with silent landscapes, birds, the sound of wind and coast. In particular, we talked a lot about the importance of traditional choirs in Estonia. It looked to be a powerful way of conducting their national identity.

The second day we introduced them to the particularities of microphones and devices for recording. They even constructed their own binaural and contact microphones used for taking the sound of footprints on the snow. As it is so unexpensive (5€ each) everyone could solder his/her own and get one. This was in particular something that was good appreciated by the students.

For recording we compared our equipment (Zoom H4n, Foxtex, AT Figure 8 mikes and soundman binaural) with the cheap microphones soldered in the workshop. Students were happy discovering that their microphones were not so bad comparing with professional ones (in particular comparing the price).

Si they started to record sounds in the gardens of Kadriorg, where KUMU is located. There was around a meter of snow in the ground. Sound was really dry because of the absortion of snow. But they took good recordings of footsteps, birds, children playing, etc. They understood the issues of recording (wind, expectations of sounds, inmersion in sound using headphones, etc).

Finally they explained their ideas for personal noTours. For example a fragmented soundwalk simulating taking trams in the garden. Trams that are bringing you to invisible stations, connecting with other stations that bring you to other unexpected places. A really cool idea.

The next day they were testing the noTours again, editing their soundwalks and continuing with their projects. It was nice to test our editor with more students. We discovered possible uses and issues of the interface that we never found. So students became beta testers and collaborators of the development of our project. They also had to work a little editing their recorded sounds. They understood working with dynamic ranges, adjusting the amplitude, removing noises, using plugins, etc. In resume, they learnt sound edition in a couple of hours.

What we found really interesting of this workshop and all we are doing is that students really get the idea of what is listening in an extended way. Connecting sound and place, and time. Secondly, the interface for the contents is really direct: walking. The idea of interface dissapearing. Making it invisible. Making the user behaviours conduct the art work. There are no screen to control. No faders or knobs. Just people movements.
They can easy project their ideas, emotions into the project. There is no need for technical skills.It is more a matter of having the enough sensibility for listening and choosing sounds. And this is what we look forward during the workshops.

NoTours proposes an augmented aurality experience. In other words, you can add a new layer of reality to your place. You can leave messages, tell stories, create geolocated concerts or just share your thoughts. The team of noTours.org is looking forward to know your ideas and your possible uses. In fact we are artists and developers. Take a look at some of the sound walks we have made in the world.

.

1. Introduction
noTours is an application for Android capable of running a soundwalk . For creating a soundwalk you should use our noTours Editor. BTW all this has been developed by the members of Escoitar.org.
This tutorial introduces you to main tasks of working with noTours, like installing or starting the application and designing your own soundwalks.

2. Installing noTours app in your smartphone.
The app can be easily installed from the Android Market o from a licensed copy by your institution.

If you are using the Android Market just follow the normal steps.

If you have a licensed copy, download the app from the online link provided. Once it is in your phone open your notifications bar and click on the downloaded app, it will ask you about installing the app. Do it!

3. Starting the application

If you succeded installing the application, a new icon pointing to noTours will be visible in your device´s menu.

Open noTours app by clicking on the icon and noTours will start automatically. First, a splash image of the project is appearing with noTours logos and credits/introduction sounds.

Secondly, a screen with a big Play Button will appear. Click and the soundwalk will be started.

4. Walking

After clicking on “Play” you will see a list of all your downloaded projects. At least you have to see one called demoNoTours, that is a demo example showing the main features of noTours.

Choose one of the projects and your noTours app will try to get connected to the GPS. Usually this process takes from some seconds to a few minutes long depending on if you are connecting in a location closer to the last soundwalk or even depending on your actual location in the world. Usually, when you are always  working within the same location it will take less than 30 seconds for getting a GPS connection.

What is particular (and critical) with GPS (and not only in particular with noTours) is the fact of not having not a good sight of the sky over you. That means that if you are among high buildings covering almost all the sky you will never have a realiable good connection.  Then, try to work in spaces with the biggest open sky available.

Once you are connected you will discover your location in the world. It is showed with a rounded marker in the middle of the screen. If you have an available Internet connection you will see a google map. If not, it will appear just as a grid giving reference to the place you are. Aditionally the application draws the areas with sounds that you have designed in your noTous Editor. They will appear in different colours: soundpoint (blue), soundpoint with speaker (green) or soundscape (red).

noTours follows your location in the map, trying to update your actual position every second (or less) with the finest precision available. Eveytime you are entering in an area with sound, your phone will vibrate during two seconds giving some kind of feedback to the user. At the same time the sound that was chosen to be sound in that area will start playing with a short fade in. When you go out of an area the phone does not vibrate but applies a short fade out as well.

We always recommend trying to forget that you are wearing a hardware with the project. Try to put the phone in a pocket or inside your hand bag (you don´t usually loose very much precision) and just walk. Then you will be able to enjoy your soundwalk in a more natural way.

5. Creating your own soundwalks

noTours Editor is hosted in www.editor.notours.org. For starting editing your soundwalks go to the Editor´s website and create a new user. Every user has an entry in a database so you will be able to store your soundwalks in our server and load or modify them later.

All the Editor is a browser oriented application. It makes use of Google Map API, PHP and java scripts. You don´t need to install anything in your computer. Go to our editor and start designing your soundwalks. It is available in three languages: English, Spanish and Galizian (easily you can create a new language if you want to contact us).

It is quite important that before editing for the first time you are sure of understanding the particularities of noTours Editor. Here the most important:

- You don´t have to upload any file to our servers. How is possible to play your audios later? noTours projects can be quite big, with hundreds of files and, with files in mp3 or wav format with a considerable size. Imagine that you have to upload GBs of files… boring and time consuming. For this reason, noTours reads all audios from a local path in your phone. This means that you have to copy manually all audio files expected to be used to a specific location in your sdcard (the location is explained later in this tutorial).

The opposite way of working (uploading your files to a central server and streaming in real time all needed audios) is not realistic for two reasons:

- You won´t like to experience cuts in your audio walk due to slow Internet connections or coverage. This happens quite often in today´s Internet providers.

- You will normally use many files at the same time because with noTours you can mix multiple layers of sounds. Parallel streaming of files will even make the first reason more realistic.

Steps for creating a soundwalk:

Create your user and type a name for your soundwalk.

The next step is choosing a location for your soundwalk. Move the map to the place in the world you can to geolocalize sounds. You can also give a small description to the project and change the title. Choose the zoom you want for the project and click on Save if you want to start editing the map.

This is the moment for adding sounds to your location. First click on Add New Sound.

You will see that an area in magenta appears is drawn in the center of the map. Automatically a new entry is created in the left bar with the parameters of that sound. Now you can:

- Move the position of the sound dragging the icon that is situated in the center of the circle.

- Change the radius of your circles: click on the white circle and move it.

- Edit the properties of a sound:

• Give a name to your sound
• Give a short description
• Choose if you want a soundpoint or a soundscape
• Edit some attributes  for playing the sound
• Type the sound file name without paths; e.g. hello.mp3 or hello.wav. Only mp3 and wav are allowed.

When you have finished editing a sound you can add another sound. The application will automatically save your changes.

Ok, now you have finished editing your soundwalk. For sending it to you phone follow the next steps:

- Click on “download” for getting a .zip file with all your project

- Unzip your project in your computer

- Connect your smartphone to the computer and allow copying files to the device.

- Browse your SD Card (or your External Storage Directory) and you will see (if the app is installed and you have run it once) that there is a folder called “notours”. Then path of this folder is then something like /sdcard/notours

- Copy the contents of your project (your .zip) to this folder in the device and extract it. You will have a file called soundscape.rss and a folder /sdcard/notours/your_project

- This is the moment of managing your audio contents. Copy to the folder “/sdcard/notours/your_project/sound” all the audio files that you are using in your project. These files have to have the same name and extension as you have specified in the editor. If not you will probably listen a big silence at an area with some mistake related to this topic.

Everytime you want to update your soundwalk in the editor, just overwrite your old “soundscape.rss”.

5.1. Soundpoints and Soundscapes

noTours have in this version two different primitives that can be chosen doble clicking on the label” Soundpoint“:

- Soundpoints: a circular area with one sound.

- Soundscapes: a circular area containing four sounds. The hardware application knows your orientation at every moment because it can read the values of an internal sensor. Depending on your orientation noTours will play a different sound with a particular volume, in a way that they will be fading in and out for morphing to the other sounds imitating a natural soundscape. You can edit the angles where each sound will be played.

For changing the soundscape angles click on the end of lines separating the areas. Each area is labelled with an area for later having the opportunity of choosing the soud files without errors.

5.2. Attributes

Atrributes are some particular effects that can be applied to the sounds. They are only applicable to the soundpoints and not to the soundscapes.

The available effects are:

- Speaker: this is an attribute affecting the volume of the sound. It varies with the distance to the center of the circle. It will be zero at the perimeter and maximum at the center.

- Loop: The sound is played in a loop when it finishes or just stops when it has been completely played.

- Microphone: it is an attribute that sends audio captured in real time from the smartphone microphone to the sound output. Then it can mix a sound file with the actual sound captured in your location. This attribute can be only applied in some smartphones. We discovered that when using some phones (like Acer) the operating system directly switches off the internal mike when headphones are connected and opens the bluetooth or headset one.

6. More help, questions, comments or bugs advice

Please, contact us through your personal noTours contact or  through the general one here.

7. Troubleshooting

- I don´t see an area or some when I run the app but they exist in my project at the editor

+ Probably you have not specified any audio file at that area, so directly the editor does not include it in the project when you donwload it. This is why it doesn´t exist for the app. Solve it typing the audio file in your area.

- I cannot hear any sound at some area.

+ Real audio file in your audio card doesn´t exist or have a different name from the typed in the editor.

- I hear a noise at some area.

+ The format of that audio file doesn´t match the specifications of your mobile phone. Use maximum stereo 44100 and 16 bits for wav and stereo 320kbps for mp3.

noTours has recently arrived Tallinn for starting the production of a new geolocalized soundwalk in the context of the exhibition Gateways (opening in May 2011 at KUMU).

We would like to link to the official website of the exhibition Gateways and copying some lines of the curatorial statement by Sabine Himmelsbach. Stay tuned.

http://www.goethe.de/ins/ee/prj/gtw/enindex.htm

The exhibition gateways. Art and Networked Culture presents artists whose work deals with the changed conditions of an interconnected world that increasingly is transmitted through media. The artistic works presented here use various means to tackle the theme of gateways that open to realms of action and experience in our digitally interconnected culture.

Mobility and connectivity are significant aspects and characteristics of our modern networked society; laptops and smart phones are the dominant accessories of the age of information. They offer constant and ubiquitous connection and access to a globalized digital network of data and information that overlays our reality like a second skin and that also influences our perception of the real objects surrounding us. Linked with GPS, RFID, GIS and other geographic information systems, mobile technologies enable us to temporally meld real space and virtual space. Data retrieval is accomplished directly on site and provides information on exact geographical location, products and much more. The Internet, too, has developed into one of the most important participatory media, next to the mobile phone. The catchphrase “Web 2.0” attempts to sum up the changes that have turned the Internet into a medium whose content increasingly is generated by users, and where people connect and exchange ideas in global online-communities. The name of the game is “participate!” And for years now, an ever-growing global online community has been busy uploading photographs and videos on online portals, announcing activities or expressing opinions through blogs or Twitter, or carrying on virtual financial transactions through online markets. Computer games, Second Life or online portals like Facebook or Myspace offer opportunities for global networking. The Internet culture, with its space- and community-building potential, is crucial to our society today.

The gateways exhibition presents works that deal with communication and networking, and that reflect a global Internet culture through the societal changes introduced by digital media. One aspect of the exhibition will comprise an examination of the reconfiguration of public space through the increasing overlap of the informational sphere and geographical space. Artists are pushing the envelope of locative media, testing their potential to provide gateways into spaces and communities and to identify alternative ways of networking beyond a largely consumer-oriented society. Mobile technologies are used in unexpected ways to render the invisible data network visible and tangible. These artistic interventions are not limited to data visualizations of a virtual space, but rather provide an opportunity to reveal suppressed knowledge – as a gateway to information.

Through the raising of various questions, a portrait emerges of how this increased networking influences our actions, our perceptions and our experiences of the world. The artistic confrontation with the significance of digitalization in society is not primarily about a reflection of technology per se, but rather about the consideration of its impact as a socio-economic phenomenon. Thus, along with the question about changing space and the increased layering of information, the question about the development of the self – which also exists through and within existing networks – comes to the fore. French philosopher Michel Serres says that new systems of communication lead to new ways of being human. How does a human being behave in a changed world where, the term “privacy” takes on a new meaning and where personal networks and digital links contribute fundamentally toward the individualized world in which we live? In a networked culture, information is not so much the product of discreet data processing units as it is the experience of networked relationships between them.

”Gateways” means access – access to spaces, to information, to data networks or communities. In computer science, a “gateway” is a switching apparatus for converting data, as an interface between various types of networks, digitally transcoding various media. The works shown in the exhibition thematize – in a manner analogous to the digital function of transmission – the transcoding or even translation of data and its evaluation in new contexts of meaning. The artistic positions on display use the opportunities of local and global networking to create access to information and to actively intervene in political and social developments. Media art in the 21st century thus does not limit itself to media forms, but rather reflects the importance of new technologies for societal and social change in a world increasingly influenced by media. The exhibition will present these concepts through a variety of artistic formats – from screen-based or Internet-based installations to interactive or sculptural environments, from the use of locative media to audio-guided walks, and more.

The gateways exhibition presents new forms of art and experimental works through which a young generation of artists in Europe – using a wide variety of media formats, including electronic networks and mobile technologies – encourages active public participation and conveys new experiences of perception. Thus the exhibition will extend beyond the KUMU Art Museum into the urban space of Tallinn, with interventionist happenings, audio-visual installations, walks or other formats.

gateways
Kunst und vernetzte Kultur / Art and Networked Culture
13 May to 25 September 2011

[Bera - Navarra - Spain]

noTours-adiBera at ERTZ Festival [September 10-18,2010]

http://www.ertza.net/eng_index.html

“To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order–not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker–not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.”

Henry D. Thoreau, The Art of Walking, 1841.

Description

According to Michel de Certeau our cities are texts written by those who travel on their habitual itinearies. Keeping away from a pan-optic model of cities, usually visual, geometric and frontal and many times designed by urbanists, it appears a need for elaborating new sensible routes that could question our urban layouts as an univocal space. We need tools and attitudes for developing new ways of interference with our urban environment.

Escoitar.org, in collaboration with the projects  Soinumapa and Adibera, proposes a rediscovering of the streets of Bera, focusing on the value of sound as a proposition of knowledge to our societies. From a theoretical approach to the listening experience, this project aims to configure a new cartography condensed in the form of a sound walk.

For us, whe should become Adibera (Adi=attention, bera=sensible), keeping sensible to habitual knowledge and examinating our environment guided only by our human senses. Then, each one of us will be able to elaborate our own village, street, district: we will conquer all those habitual landscapes. We will fill them with personal details, establishing many personal marks and rediscovering those other invisible.

Far away from the propositon of a formal audioguide, we offer you building a collaborative map that could embrace all our memories, impressions, echoes, etc… of our territory.

noTours-adiBera is a project in collaboration by noTours [Escoitar.org] and adiBera [Festival Ertz].

Hardware/Web noTours: Chiu Longina

Software: Enrique Tomás, Berio Molina y Horacio González

Concept, documentation: Juan-Gil López

Technical Assistant Bera > Xavier Balderas

Contents Bera> Adibera & Soinumapa: Jakoba Errekondo, Alex Mendizabal, Juan José Aranguren, Xabier Erkizia, Iñigo Telletxea, Asier Gogortza

Special Thanks to everybody helping us in Bera!

Some Press Links: Diario Vasco and more at Diario Vasco

Según las leyendas más conocidas, después de la Primera Guerra en el Cielo, muchos ángeles fueron expulsados, convirtiéndose así en ángeles caídos. El ángel caído más reconocido por la historia es Lucifer; aunque esta palabra nunca se usa para referirse a un ángel caído dentro de la Biblia. Una de las pocas estatuas del mundo que hacen referencia a este ser está en los Jardines del Parque de El Retiro. Esa será la clave de este paseo sonoro que Escoitar.org propone.

Hace unos días el Ángel Caído representado en la estatua, bello, con alas desplegadas y contorsionado, consiguió liberarse de las serpientes diabólicas que enroscaban su cuerpo. Este hermoso y aterrador ser, con rostro crispado por su grito de desesperación, ha dejado de mirar al cielo con recelo, ha esquivado el rayo que pretendía partirlo y ahora vaga errante por El Retiro, con sus alas abiertas, buscando al paseante.

Se manifiesta a través del sonido y esa “Caja de Pandora” que los visitantes llevarán en sus manos (las audioguías noTours) son la puerta que le dará vida, su espacio para manifestarse. Él y su séquito de moscas entregarán las claves para resolver un misterio; hablará con el visitante, le susurrará al oído, tratará de poseerte. Sólo existe un modo de evitar esta infeliz tragedia: resolviendo el acertijo.

Del 22 de abril al 30 de junio en la “Colina de las Ciencias”. Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid.

FICHA TÉCNICA DEL PROYECTO

TÍTULO: noTours [El Ángel]
DIRECCIÓN: Escoitar.org
PRODUCCIÓN: La Casa Encendida
TEXTO: Escoitar.org
SOFTWARE: Android | Pure Data | noTours [Augmented Aurality]
HARDWARE: Smartphone Acer Liquid A1 | TetraQiq (micrófono ambisónico de fabricación propia), micrófonos binaurales Soundman, Tascam, Fostex FR2-LE + Audio-Technica BP-4029 Microphone, HI-MD RZ-01, Edirol R-09, Tascam HD-P2 + Rhode NT-4 Microphone
REALIZACIÓN: Marzo/Abril 2010
FORMATO: Smartphone | GPS | Brújula Digital + Ambisonic/Binaural Sound
DISEÑO SOFTWARE+HARDWARE: Enrique Tomás + Chiu Longina
PROCESO DE DOCUMENTACIÓN: Juan-Gil López
AUDIO: Juan-Gil López, Enrique Tomás y Chiu Longina
VOZ: Juan-Gil López
AUDIO-CITAS: John Milton, Jorge Luis Borges, Leopoldo María Panero, Rainer María Rilke, Rafael Alberti y Ricardo Alberto Nieto.
WEB DEL PROYECTO: http://www.notours.org/

Mapa
Con las audioguías se entregará un mapa en el que se pueden ver los espacios del paseo sonoro que contienen audio. Todos los jardines del Paseo del Duque Fernan Núñez suenan. Si el visitante sale de esos espacios las Audioguías avisan acústicamente.
Ver noTours en El Retiro en un mapa más grande

DESCARGAR DOCUMENTACIÓN DEL PROYECTO:
Información sobre el proceso de construcción del proyecto (PDF)
+Información

DESCARGAR LA OBRA SONORA COMPLETA (mp3/256kbps/150 megas)
(Se requiere contraseña. Puedes conseguirla haciendo el paseo por El Retiro y resolviendo el acertijo)

EL ÁNGEL
Augmented Aurality
by Escoitar.org

Oh you, the wisest and fairest of the Angels,
God betrayed by destiny and deprived of praise,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Oh Prince of Exile, you who have been wronged
And who vanquished always rise up again more strong,

Oh Satan, take pity on my long misery!

Charles Baudelaire

Gardens are enclosed spaces, like scars that do nothing but reminding us of a permanent injury, the primal longing for a moment, the back to an utopian balance. Plots that in different cultures have played ritual roles, as transits, where two worlds intersect, the human and the divine, two sides, as Rilke insists in his Elegies, they take place inparallel, ”The eternal current carries two realms of all ages and always takes them and chokes the sound in both. “Marks traced onthe floor, legible as a text, places built for retirement and to fill our senses but which often gives us a way to the picturesque and the sublime, the beautiful to the scary to the awe and ecstasy. Havens where bright lights  and casted shadows that inevitably accompany us, sometimes inhospitable taken by the fog, stirred by the wind and always populated by many small noises.

As in The Garden of Forking Paths by Borges, El Angel is a winding maze of temporary sounds accentuated by the events that surround us,”an incomplete picture, a story made of stories, an immersive story built with words and sounds composed from the territory and a drift between paragraphs of different authors and references to many gardens behind which lurks just one. It is a real but imaginary wanderproduced as an organic narrative that gives us the common misperception of space, a walk accompanied by one that relies on constant tension on the circular pedestal of the Buen Retiro Garden and now wanders with us between streets, banks and lakes.

For ”El Angel” Escoitar.org has produced the noTours application, which formats will make this audio guide stroll through geolocated gardens (using GPS technology and Digital Compass + and production of binaural 3D audio). Pure sensory experience pleasure. Looking for El Angel.

Some moments of the production period of  ”El Ángel” – a collective exhibition at  ARTe SONoro, Casa Encendida, April 2010.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The work is a 360º soundscape of the city of Rotterdam. Audience can explore it while seated in a spinning chair because the playback changes depending on view´s orientation. It was built on Android and the code will be included in a future version of noTours. Enrique Tomás (the programmer, and the main Android/noTours software developer), has presented this work in Rotterdam on December 2009.

Enrique says:

During the last two months (October and November 2009) I enjoyed an Artist in Residence period at Foundation b.a.d. in Rotterdam.

For the final presentation I decided to show four new electronic compositions in an installation format . The particular interface that I did (a spinning chair) makes possible to enjoy a 360º degrees soundscape that changes with listener´s orientation. All the audio has 3D spatial properties due to the use of binaural and ambisonic recordings.

For the composition I recorded many hours at natural soundscapes of the city of Rotterdam. Each composition is about some aspect of the city (if you want to listen these four recordings, go to the author’s website)

NAME: Rotterdam Soundscapes
DESCRIPTION: The work is a 360º soundscape of the city of Rotterdam. Audience can explore it while seated in a spinning chair because the playback changes depending on view´s orientation.
MATERIALS: Spinning Chair, Headphones, Android Phone, Android Programming, Binaural Recordings
YEAR: 2009