Cultural cinema and digital creativity centre in Bristol UK

Yesterday we had 12 people here at the Pervasive Media Studio for a workshop about how sounds remind us of other people. Everyone had brought an object or a sound with them that reminded them of someone they know well but is often distant. We used the objects and sounds to introduce each other to friends and relatives at a distance, and then drew diagrams of how we keep in touch with those people over time.

There were some really interesting descriptions of the exchange of emails, SMS messages and phone calls over a month or a year. Some people talked about keeping in touch through facebook and twitter activity that while it isn’t directly messaging each other they keep up with what each other are doing. Others used skype to see each other, or to spend time together even if not directly in conversation. Some drawings included physical travel as a method of keeping in touch, and mentioned the importance of meeting face to face, of looking forward to meeting up, who makes more effort to travel, and the possibility of shared hugs and walks. Most people said that they still use the post to send birthday cards and presents, and to send postcards.

One theme that came up was how these ways of keeping in contact are ways of caring for people, exchanging updates on the health of relatives, having regular weekly meals together or warning someone of dangerous weather conditions. For some there was a sense that they were not keeping in touch ‘enough’, in others the frequency of contact made them very much part of each others lives. These insights about how we keep in touch with others at a distance are really useful to this project because they help us to understand the kind of connection we might, or might not, be able to make using the sonification of GPS.

As a simple way to think about how sounds remind us of people we used the workshop to make ringtones for everyone’s phones. Using the objects or sounds that participants had brought with them to the workshop we bashed, played, sprayed, shook, washed, wound and tapped objects to create sounds. These recordings will become personalized ringtones that are associated only with that specific friend or relation at a distance.The activity of making the sounds however became more amusing that we’d expected. People went off into broom cupboards, the ladies showers and meeting rooms in order to find silent spaces to record their sounds. Huddled in cupboards with other participants they stretched washing up gloves, played stylophones and wound a music box. By the end of the workshop participants suggested that the sounds now remind them of the workshop instead of the original person they were thinking about.

Learning from this as we develop the actual objects that will contain the sonified GPS, we hope to bring the two people who will use the objects together to make the sound. A shared event would then be a memory that is part of their relationship, rather than hiding in a broom cupboard with a stranger!