Building Sound Fabrics

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London

CC-BY Aural Fabric at Inter/sections 2016 - Alessia Milo

Architects create beautiful drawings and models of their buildings to give people an idea of what they will look like...but what will they sound like? Who thinks about that? Alessia Milo is an architect, studying for a Media Arts Technology PhD at QMUL who thinks sound should be taken more seriously.

She created an interactive textile map as a way to increase awareness of how architecture affects the spread of sound. It's a plan view of the buildings around Greenwich in London on the banks of the Thames. To make it she first went on tour of the area, recording the sounds as she walked. She then made her map interactive, embedding circuitry and sensors in the fabric so that as you touched different buildings on the map the sounds from that place were played.

More details at auralcharacter.wordpress.com/aural-fabric/