Sonic City: The Urban Environment as a Musical Interface

In the project Sonic City, we have developed a system that enables users to create electronic music in real time by walking through and interacting with the urban environment. We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic music making. A multi-disciplinary design process resulted in the implementation of a wearable, context-aware prototype. The system produces music by retrieving information about context and user action and mapping it to real-time processing of urban sounds. Potentials, constraints, and implications of this type of music creation are discussed.