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January 18, 2005
instant replay @01:26 PM
Marientina made a comment last semester on my final thesis presentation, with the idea that perhaps I should consider the notion of replay-ability in my project. The way things currently stand, locations hold different music files depending on what time of day, and what day of week, you are at a given location. This creates a sense of the space as a shifting, living thing, and fits more nicely into my narrative framework. However, as marientina pointed out, and glenn III also noted, such a scheme will prevent people from, for example, walking the same path everyday and hearing the same music.
While I certainly respect that idea, and relate to the desire for consistency between location and music, I'm going to try and relate now why I think this is not ideal for this specific encarnation of location-based audio.
a) You can do this with your iPod, and it will be a better experience. This is what normal portable music devices allow you to do: to be in control. What I'm trying to do is build a new type of music architecture, in a way, and allowing this element of control runs contrary to advancing that goal. I think it becomes too much like trying to pump a model of music onto a new technology, instead of thinking about how a new technology could change the experiences we have with music.
That being said, certainly there are a number of different applications that would greatly benefit from a consistency, and I'm more than certain that I've thought of, and plan to think about these applications in the future. I think the idea with this specific project, though, is to have the music space dynamic and flexible, and I'm afraid of what the static thing would do to it. I guess I'm thinking of reaching for the sweet spot of the below matrix we keep talking about, the new technology, new media. I think I'm in the "new technology, old media" category, and I'm really trying to push into that "new media, new technology" category.
b) The best way to implement such a feature would require people logging into the system and setting up a preference that would circumvent the time-based quality of the music. The wireless area of culver city is not such that it could support having all 7 songs active at unique nodes each day.
c) you can replay the music. In the space, you have to know when the section of music you like is active, and then you can reexperience it. Otherwise, you can unlock an mp3 of the stuff you like and listen to it at home whenever you want.
Kurt made a great analogy today, relating the experience people have when they walk out of a movie or musical theater or opera or something, and are humming it outside of the offical space of the original music content (the theater, etc). Then if you want more, you can go back to the theater, or you can buy the soundtrack.
I'm not trying to strike down suggestions here. this specific idea was a good one -- in fact I encourage more because it helps me elucidate my own intentions.
Any additional comments would be appreciated.
posted by will | comments (0) | 
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