Recycled Soundscape Sonic Diversion in the City

The proliferation of mobile communication and digital media has altered our presence in the urban environment and the way we perceive the city. The topology of our sensory domain has been rendered steadily more complexly connected, recapitulating deployments of wearable and ubiquitous technologies, as today we are frequently in one location but engaged (using one or more senses) with people and places elsewhere (e.g., on the phone). Consequently, the number of stimuli that can reach us anywhere and anytime is on the rise. For city dwellers, this means more stressful and chaotic experiences in alreadyoverwhelmed urban spaces, and for the acoustic ecology of public space (championed in market-based design as an alternative modality for new interfaces), a growing confusion.