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Urban soundtrack- A bike bell rings the acoustic story of the city
[Introduction]
城市音軌(Urban soundtrack)透過腳踏車日常行走的路徑
以腳踏車鈴為介面 演奏出屬於每個騎士與隱藏在城市內各處聲響間的獨特音調
Urban soundtrack is a location-awareness bike bell attached on a bicycle which collects, mixes and plays sound that is associated to specific places in the city. As a sensitive bike bell, Urban soundtrack has these main features:
- It receives and collects pieces of sound from surroundings when people ride bikes around different places.
- It plays mixed music instead of ordinary bike ring while being triggered.
- It modifies and mixes the sound it has restored according to the relationship between itself and other bikes.
In this sense, the Urban soundtrack transforms a bike from the ordinary transportation tool to an musical instrument and augments people’s daily moving experience.

A place is not only a spot on the map- it is also associated to an specific context and stories. However, it is usually ignored by people in their daily life. The Urban soundtrack assigns each area within a city its own unique and representative sound which can be received by the special bicycle bell. For example, when people pass a bridge across a canal by bicycle, their bicycles will receive a piece of romantic music which can be associated to this place. In this way, a historical building, an open market and even a construction site can be more meaningful to the citizens.

The observation on the road

To obtain more inspiration and insight for the design concept, I walked around the central area of Amsterdam and took lots of pictures which represented the interesting phenomenon regarding the use and situation of bicycles in this city.
As a result, I categorized these photos into three main topics:
1. The symbols and signs on the road regarding the behaviors of using bicycles. (e.g. suggestion and forbiddance)
2. The places and approaches people park their bicycles.
3. The relationship between bikes. (What if bicycles can sense each other?)

A bike bell as the interface of collecting and playing urban soundtrack

I chose a bike bell as the interface of a bike to collect and play sound from the surrounding because it is an “ordinary” accessory for most bikes. People do not need to attach any other additional gadgets on their bicycles for the Urban soundtrack.
Moreover, a bike bell is usually considered as the representation of personalization which has the potential for being enhanced in order to improve people’s experience.

[Scenario]

Based on the lectures during the workshop, I made this structure of the scenarios in order to answer these essential questions: Design for whom? Why? What to achieve? How?

Scenario-01: Collecting and playing Urban soundtrack

Once the new coming sound is restored by the bike bell, people can trigger the bell to play it as the ring of their bicycle.
The bike ring is no longer the ordinary “ding ding” sound, instead, it can recall people’s memory and identification with the places they have ever been. It is like the theme song which belongs to the specific area.

Scenario-02: Modifying and mixing received sound according to the relationship between bikes

In this scenario, I tried to personalize bikes as they have real emotion and feeling.
These bikes not only receive and play locative sound, but they also change the tone and pitch of these sounds by their “emotion”.
For example, if someone parks his bike just near another bike, these two bikes will feel “touched” and then change the sound they have restored before into happier and more cheerful tone. On the contrary, if one bike is placed with lots of bikes in a messy situation, it will feel terrible and thus modify the sound more depressed.
In consequence, the Urban sound is not only determined by the location but also depends on the behavior of people and the different situation.

[Prototype]

Hardware: RFID tags and reader, bicycle bell, mouse hack
Software: Processing, Flash

[General info.]
May 7-11, 2007
Hybrid World Lab workshop
Mediamatic, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
**Special thanks to the trainers-Timo Arnall, Nicolas Nova, Giles Lane and all the staff of Mediamatics.