Started teaching this week and the world still moves. Having had conversations with the other staff (that will be ongoing), I sketched out some ways of donating data from the Unheard City project and using phones around it. It is a challenge. No doubt the work will change and move, but it raises some interesting non-technical challenges that affect the technical aspects. These are not just user experience for upload but include privacy challenges and re-use later. So much more to be done, but the frameworks that I have been looking at may have applications to the things that I am already doing.
While I was doing some of the work above on data donations, I quickly wrote up a tool that I am currently calling Tapestry. I created some scripts to explore audio on Tiktok and create a meta-audio file that had different designs and patterns. I focused on timelines but the idea of repetition seems to be possible. The idea is that one can not only make audio files but that it has a simple way of approaching it that is not based on the an understanding of audio. I am hoping that it becomes a way of rapidly developing files in digital methods projects to make audio more available as a research object.
I have been thinking a bit more about the Robots sonifications. I am wondering if there is some way of “editing” the data to get some more focused sonic objects. I had some ideas about future designs or experiments while walking this morning that do need a good test.
Added: Meanwhile, the rewrite of the thesis towards being a book continues.