home | hauntedcastle.org | sao bento music | mobile | about

www.flickr.com More of William C. Arter's photos

Recent Posts -> so much goin... -> mobisodes in... -> mobile album... -> NIME 2005... -> game music... ->

« sound | moblogging | Main | sonic collaboration_1 »

April 25, 2003

sonic annotation, audio digression @03:31 PM

http://www.mpi.nl/ISLE/documents/papers/Vollmann_paper.pdf

The above is a paper dealing with some aspects of how we might create annotation systems that include sound. While text and image annotation have been rather thoroughly explored, sound annotation is a sparsely documented area, but something I think could be incredibly important and meaningful. Why is this? One reason is perhaps that sound information is less tangible, less explicit. However, I don't see this as necessarily true. couldn't be leveraged.

a) There are specific kinds of Sound information that are culturally signficant to us, music being the most obvious. How can this be used in an annotation system?

b) I think that the very ambiguity and beauty present in many sounds could really create some interesting, if not annotative, experiences when used across a wireless network. Back to my fishing-in-idaho example from a previous post, I capture the sound of the stream and send it to my friend in new york with or without any image / text support. Does my friend realize I'm on a stream in idaho? Does he just like the sound and not care where it came from? Does he care at all? Does he send me back a sound of the subway stopping? I like the idea of this type of auditory feedback. Sound is an important cultural tool, and can be used in more compelling ways than ringtones.

steps:
- check specs on phone adc (I'm not sure if they exist)
- decide probably not use phone adc
- hack the phone to include a better adc / dac
- build (server side) software that records audio to a server and enables the user to send that stream information to others
- hack the phone to support a stereo audio signal, thereby enabling the user to use their own set of stereo headphones / buds

So, yeah- time to get to work, I guess. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, please...

posted by will | comments (2) | permalink

| all rights william carter |
| view cc license |

LINKing your iPod and your cellphone
Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003
http://www.gizmodo.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=skull+candy

You have an MP3 player and a cellphone, but listening to one usually precludes talking on the other. Skullcandy's (which is a horrid name for a company) new LINK headphones connect to both gadgets, so you can actually listen to music while you talk on the phone. You can also turn the volume all the way down when you have a call, if that's your thing. How does it work? The LINK has a tiny microphone built-into the cord so it can double as a hands-free headset, and comes with two jacks - one to plug into your portable audio player, the other for your cellphone.

Posted by: sfisher at April 29, 2003 03:31 AM

very cool indeed. thanks for the link.

Posted by: will at April 29, 2003 03:34 PM