COmpass
COmpass -a modern soundscape navigation machine
COmpass is a machine designed to navigate modern cities’ soundscapes; with the help of a field recorder, this device takes an incoming sonic signal and alters it in real time through a sound synthesis method called granular synthesis, which samples and splits the incoming sound into small pieces of around 1 to 50 milliseconds, for which they are referred to as grains. The quantity of grains being generated is proportional to the quantity of CO2 particles at the location in question, detected by an air quality sensor integrated into the device.
COmpass acknowledges pollution as a direct repercussion and one of the most indicative manifestations of anthropocentric capitalist industrialisation and western notion of progress. Pollution’s relevance is trivialised by a reference frame within which information overload affects the discernment and awareness we have towards it. COmpass aims to develop ways through which we (re)acquire sensibility towards such a crucial problem; it refers to the audible sense -and sensorial experience in general- as a medium through which we might come to have diverse insights and ways to understand sociocultural phenomena.
