Vawter, N. "Ambient Addition: How to Turn Urban Noise into Music"

Abstract

As human civilization devises ever more powerful machines, living among them may become more difficult. We may find ourselves surrounded by incidentally created sounds and noises which are out of synchronization with our momentary needs and discordant. Currently, legislating noise pollution is the only articulated solution and clearly it is not very effective. Our impression of sound, however, may be mediated and manipulated, transformed into something less jarring. So far, Walkmans and sound canceling headphones have done this, isolating us from noise but also from one another. In their place, a next generation headphone system is proposed which integrates environmental sound into a personal soundscape. It allows one to synthesize music from environmental sound using a number of digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms to create a sonic space in which the listener remains connected with his or her surroundings, is also cushioned from the most harsh and arrhythmic incursions and may also be drawn to appreciate the more subtle and elegant ones.