tuning the city

"tuning the city”

is a project that explores a musification of the urban ecosystem. It is an attempt at online sound mapping to find interlinkages between the natural, and the anthropocentric. These meeting points have been explored through a collection of field recordings in the neighbourhood of Villeray, in Montreal, Canada, as well as through biodata sonification. This is a process that measures the fluctuations of conductivity across the surface of a plant’s leaf, which have been collected from a number of bushes and trees. Subsequently, this data was converted to MIDI notes to constitute the melodic elements playable on this interactive map.

Just as the presence of humans constantly affects the health and quality of nature and ecosystems, statistical data of the population living in this area of the city has been mapped to different sound parameters, which shapes the musical content deriving from the plants. The interactions between the two can in some ways resemble those of the social-ecological systems that continuously take place within urban ecologies.

The footprint of humanity that is left on our natural surroundings tends to leave us feeling hopeless, but within the virtual space - this interaction offers a not so gloomy experience, instead being immersed in the pleasant soundscape of "Tuning the city".

A project By Malte Leander.

Web Design By Julien Darling-Funk.

malteleander1@gmail.com
juliendf@me.com