Cultural cinema and digital creativity centre in Bristol UK

The first week of the residency raced by in a series of meetings with interesting people both at the Pervasive Media Studio and from outside about developing different aspects of the work.

A central part of the work that I have been thinking about is the idea of ‘sonifying’ GPS data, that is, making sound that is related to movement.

The most straightforward way to do this would be to record footsteps and breathing. To begin with I tried to count my steps as I walked home from the Pervasive Media Studio, but it was difficult to tell if I was counting the steps or stepping the counts. The regular pace of footsteps slowed down when I started to walk up hill and was broken by stopping to cross a road. The pace of movement could be counted in steps but it would not necessarily be related to speed, I could be making tiny fast steps or running and the counted steps could be the same.

GPS devices record locations at regular timed intervals, and can therefore measure the speed of travel between those locations. The location is measured in latitude, longitude and altitude, linked to time. If there was a tick every time a location points was made they would count a regular pace, like a metronome.  In order to listen to the speed of movement however I would need a metronome that measures distance, like a trundle wheel that ticks every metre. This week Dan at the PM studio made a ‘space metronome’ so that I can listen to GPS data and the changing speeds of movement.

Later in the project these different speeds will be related to different sounds, but for now the ‘space metronome’ will help me to understand what it feels like to listen to GPS data and to movement rather than to see it drawn on a map.