audio – Pan Studio

The Song of the Machines

Sam Hill

20th July 2012

Chirp

We’ve been working with Animal Systems to find a way of communicating Chirp to the world – a platform they’ve developed for devices to share data with each other via audio. Chirp was demoed recently at Future Everything and Sonar, and the explanatory film below has now been released into the public domain. Which would be you. Hello you!

(credit – audio production: Coda-Cola)

Overview

Chirp allows devices to share data wirelessly, through sound. To showcase the potential of the technology Animal Systems are launching their first app, which will allow people to share information – initially short-links to their photos – between iOS devices in a streamlined, intuitive manner. Sharing contacts, notes and locations are soon expected to follow, as well as a version for Android. This is the tip of the iceberg for the platform’s potential, however. Their CEO and co-founder Patrick Bergel (aka @GoodMachine) explained to us how he’s “very interested in opening up the platform as much as we can, and working with other developers”.

Their intentions are many fold. Patrick emphasises that Chirp is not just an application, but a platform – so other applications could be built using it. In providing a piece of middleware, they’re keen to see an eclectic range of software use the technology – for gaming, social media, organisation tools and broadcasting. They’d also like see more hardware devices embrace it’s data-transfer capability; crossing operating systems and serving both so-called ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’ objects.

User Experience and Interaction Potential

An audio protocol of this nature comes with some quite distinct UX properties, the potential of which we’re finding very interesting. There are some inherent traits that make it stand out from other data-sharing systems – it has the bonus of not requiring the fuss of ‘pairing’ devices, and one broadcasting device can share information to multiple recipients simultaneously.

From an experiential perspective, we specifically like the fact that object-to-object communication becomes far more tangible to organic meatbags like you or I, simply because it permeates the boundaries of our perception. With audible data transfer we can tell if a device has broadcast it’s message, and make a good guess as to whether another nearby device is likely to have received it. There’s no need for symbolic feedback here (cartoon envelopes vaporising into space dust) – we’re actually hearing the actual data travel, encoded in the airwaves. There’s something appreciably humanistic going on here – a stark contrast to radio EMF technologies like Wi-fi, Bluetooth, or RFID (as BERG highlighted with their Immaterials research).

The idea of a relatively open system like this was exciting news for us. It can’t be long before the marketplace produces some very novel games and applications that use the tech. In fact, we have a few ideas ourselves we’d like to pursue.

The Future

Significantly this appears to be the first instance of an airborne object-to-object “speech” system. It’s tantalisingly fun therefore, to wonder if we might be hearing the formative stages of a robotic lingua franca; something unlike either the silence of EMF radio, or the explicitly human-centric discourse of Siri. Within the local network of things, a truly physical environment, where smart-objects must interact in-situ with people and other objects amongst people, this could be a real and appropriate voice of the machines – to us inimitable, but appreciable. We might even come to be familiar with a few of their stock phrases, like “excuse me”, “I’m busy/ available” or “acknowledged”.

(Or “KILL KILL KILL” – basically, whatever the situation demands.)

Earphones and Selective Reality

Sam Hill

20th November 2011

It’s feasible an average commuting city worker might wear earphones between 5 and 12 hours a day. In some places they’re ubiquitous – on the train, in the office, on the high street – so much as to have become invisible.

This is fine of course – it’s not a criticism, just an observation. Personal experience reveals journeys are less stressful if the sound of a baby crying can be blocked; work is achieved more efficiently without the ambient distractions of an open-plan office.

But the observation does come with a hefty question in tow. It’s equally typical that the aforementioned worker might spend up to 15-16 hours a day looking at screens, but there is a significant difference: screens are not all encompassing. They can be looked away from, or around, and we can shut our eyes. Conversely, personal headphones are supposed to be all encompassing; they are supposed to override all ambient noise.

What does it mean then, to block out the world around you: to usurp an important link to one’s environment for so much of the time?

Context

The personal stereo is about 25 years old and has gone through multiple format changes. Significantly, the MP3 player massively opened up the potential for people to carry their “entire” music collections with them. Another (slightly overlooked) innovation has been Spotify for mobile, which allows someone to listen to any song they can call to mind from practically any location through their smartphone, 3G and ‘the cloud’. Even making allowances for licensing and signal strength, that’s an incredible thought isn’t it? Any song, any place, any time. From prehistory up until 150 years ago, the only way to hear music was to be in the same space as the instrument. There is an incredibly liberating cultural power that comes with the tech we now wield.

Voluntary Schism from Reality

To take a critical sensation like hearing and hack it’s primarily informative/exploratory role to instead supply entertainment will certainly have a significant effect on one’s perception of reality. Granted, ‘reality’ is a weasely, subjective term, but the choice will still affect an individual’s capacity to perceive their immediate environment. Critically, the user of earphones has made a choice: they are listening to what they want to, regardless of whether it’s what she should listen to. They have been granted the power to exert an amount of control on sensory input, and how they engage with their environment. Whether or not there is an experiential ‘compromise’ going on is contentious.

For example, consider a typical 40 minute train commute. Coincidently, 40 minutes is the approximate length of time of an average album. So within a week’s commute it might be possible to listen to roughly 10 new albums. Doing so would impart a constant, fairly rich supply of fresh experience. On the other hand, listening instead to the daily sounds of a train carriage would probably be emotionally and sensationally lacking, most of the time. However, occasionally the ambient noise of a journey might yield (experiential) gems: eavesdropping on an argument, a phone call or the ramblings of an alcoholic.

Most likely, the album-listening route would be more rewarding in the long term, and so within this context could be considered experientially condonable. But is this true beyond the commute?

Boundaries

Has society had time to adjust to the power of being able to limit depth of engagement with the physical world? Do we understand the point at which the benefit becomes a hurdle – when a delivery mechanism for experience becomes an obstacle? The thought first occurred to me when I saw a father carrying a toddler in his arms through a park. The father had white earphones hanging from his ears and a vacant expression. The kid was babbling and humming and blowing raspberries at his dad but he was completely oblivious. The sight, an abuse of technological power, made me instantly uncomfortable. The fact this man had wilfully placed a barrier between himself and his son, to the detriment of them both, made me incredibly angry, actually. In this instance it wasn’t strangers on the tube being phased out of attention but immediate family. It seemed wrong by every measure of quality.

I’ve also been amazed to see cyclists weave through traffic whilst listening to music. In my experience it seems necessary to dedicated every possible faculty to cycling in a built-up environment. Granted, there might be marginally more experiential value in cycling to music, but is the pay-off worth the risk of failing to identify peripheral hazards? After all, a premature death will reduce an individuals net lifetime experience acquired, quite drastically.

By Analogy

In a recent workshop we held at Goldsmith’s College, a design student ran a quick experiment to limit their exposure to unpleasant smells. They subverted their olfactory sense by keeping a perfumed cloth over their nose whilst walking through bad smelling places.

The student realised within a few hours that living with a single abstract ‘pleasant’ smell was less desirable than having access to countless neutral and unpleasant odours – odours which were still relevant and contextually grounded.