Project Description

UrbanRemix is a collaborative and locative sound project. Our goal in developing UrbanRemix was to design a platform and series of public workshops that would enable participants to develop and express the acoustic identity of their communities, and enable users of the website to explore and experience the soundscapes of the city in a novel fashion.

The UrbanRemix platform consists of a mobile phone system and web interface for recording, browsing, and mixing audio. It allows users to document and explore the obvious, neglected, private or public, even secret sounds of the urban environment. Participants in the UrbanRemix workshops become active creators of shared soundscapes as they search the city for interesting sound cues. The collected sounds, voices, and noises provide the original tracks for musical remixes that reflect the specific nature and acoustic identity of the community.

The project draws upon long-standing aesthetic practices that bring real-world sounds into electronic works, such as musique concréte, acoustic ecology, and the chance approaches of John Cage, as well as practices in public art and design that structure new forms of engagement and collaboration between artists, designers and citizens.

The project was conceived of and is directed by Jason Freeman, Michael Nitsche, and Carl Disalvo, who are professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia. It is made possible by the invaluable work of numerous students and designers, and supported in part by the Music Technology program, the Digital Media program, and the GVU center at Georgia Tech.

As part of the City Centered Festival, UrbanRemix will be conducting workshops with community groups from Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin. https://www.glide.org/ More information about the workshops will be available soon.

In addition, the sounds collected through the workshops with Glide will be used as part of a performance at the Luggage Store Gallery on Sunday, June 13 at 2:30pm.

Team Information

Jason Freeman – jason (dot) freeman (at) gatech (dot) edu

Carl DiSalvo – carl (dot) disalvo (at) lcc (dot) gatech (dot) edu

Website

For more information about the UrbanRemix project please click here