An Artistic Sonic Mobile Mapping System

Abstract

In this article the author describes her artistic involvement in a research project charting the optical flow in the brain when both the beholder and his or her surroundings are relatively in motion. The result of this kind of artistic research cannot scientifically fully be verbalized. But it manifests itself in the produced art works and throughout their process. It is a research about generating sound and colour with an anteriorly unpredictable result. Among others it is conducted with interactive applications and algorithms, data-sonification and visualization without a functional image-sound-content coupling. The relative shifts and translations from image to sound and from sound to image intend to work out the multiple and complex complementary artistic layers in moving, active and interactive image and sound. Using three generations of mobile mapping projects a survey is sketched of the different video and sound installations. For each of those a specific artistic sonic mapping system was developed. From the period between 2001 and today four projects have been selected: HH, R20, A40 and Freeway. Ranging from the earliest recordings with photoresistors (LDR, Light Dependent Resistors) and square wave generators to the recent works, using image sensors (CMOS, Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) of digital video cameras and Visual Programming Language.