Project: Synchronies
Partners: Sound Earth Legacy, Kinda Studios
Commissioner: British Council, Mira Arts Festival
Synchronies, a creation by Cellule Studio (UK) in collaboration with Sound Earth Legacy (Spain) and Kinda Studios (UK) is an interactive sonic experience which enable audiences to experience and understand the impact of environmental sound pollution on their own health in a unique symbiotic musical performance.
Year
2022
Sector
Music Festival
Discipline
360 Sound
Field recording
Interactive media
Sonic artwork
Scenography
Bio-rhythms
Ethos
Empathy
Engagement
Sonic Health
Interactive
Humane tech
Contemplative
” Because of climate change we are losing the natural sounds of the planet, an important part of our sensory heritage. ”
The cultivation of environmental and collective empathy is essential to sustainability. Music is one of the most powerful tools to communicate and create empathy. We want to accelerate positive change toward sustainability in allowing our audiences to viscerally perceive the connection between their bodies and the earth, enhancing their understanding of the planet they live in and inhabit everyday.
“Synchronies use spatial sound technology, biophonic and anthropogenic field recordings, mixed with bio-signals “
Our concept is to record the heartbeats of our audience as part of a sonic journey while audience members are exposed to natural environmental sounds and man made noise pollution under and above sea levels. The changes in physiological response from audience members influence the light scenography (colour and pulse), and displayed on a data visualisation, with a comparison to what other mammals could feel from those frequencies.
Synchronies use spatial sound technology, biophonic, geophonic and anthropogenic field recordings, showcasing its impact on audience physiology through heart rate real time capture. The performance framework is built on proven models in neuroscience including interoception and its correlation with empathy.
“We want to
accelerate change
toward sustainability by allowing people to viscerally perceive the connection between their bodies and the earth”
Sound Earth Legacy is a non-profit organization aiming to preserve the sounds of the earth and supporting pioneer scientific environmental projects through sound and music. Cellule is a design studio with a mission to allow audiences to reconnect to their own health and bodies through interactive and innovative experiences. Together we integrate advanced research in bioacoustics and interactive media, to advance collective awareness and understanding of the impact of sound pollution under seal level and its consequences on the overall planet health.
We have chosen to work together and music festivals to get closer to our common goal: engaging audiences on the urgency of preserving the sonic health of our planet and the one of our own bodies. We believe in sonic interfaces as a powerful tools to allow audiences to experience the issue at an embodied level, and in interactive media to facilitate democratic broad access.
Creative direction/ Production: Salome Bazin
Sound narrative/PR : Andrea Lamount
Neuroaesthetic adviser: Robyn Landau
Creative technologist: Simon Haenggi
Composer: Arthur Astier
Thanks to the help of Sean Malikides, Yildiz Tufan and Kiran Scott.
Sponsored from British Council.
Inclusive Design
Body Technology
Interactive Architecture
We believe that learning from diversity enhances our creativity, and improves our work as designers and people.
Inclusive design means that a product, service or environment is designed with the knowledge and expertise of users who are ‘experts’ of their situations and can prioritize needs. A collaborative design process allows to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas and insights to address a broader social challenge and prevents major biases that could occur from a design-engineer centric approach.
By ‘body technology’, we encompass two notions: embodied computing and cognitive science, which have been interlacing in our projects.
Body centered technologies point to hybrid bodies and blurr boundaries between human, computer and artificial platforms. Such technologies promise to reconfigure the relationship between bodies and their environment, enabling new kinds of physiological interfacing. The latter is the science of cognition: how the human brain thinks, learns, organises itself. It seeks to understand the principles of intelligence and behaviour, individually and collectively.
Computer/human collaboration is an emerging trend in science as well as artistic disciplines (dance, music, performance).
Interactive architecture is the art/science of creating spaces and buildings that interact with their visitors. By incorporating sensors, processors and effectors in the core of the architecture,we can create intelligent spaces that acquire the ability to gather information from the physical space, understand it and act in consequence on it. This allows architects to create a real-time, personalised interaction between a space and its visitors – between a smart object and a smart subject. For us designers, they become a vector for interactive art. We aim to create ‘spaces’ that respond to our presence and help us understand complex notions of the physical and natural world that we are constantly interacting with.
Computational Cardiology
Computational cardiology is the use of advanced imaging, genetic screening and devices to understand heart conditions and to treat patients according to their specific pathophysiology. Cardiologists use computational models that analyse great amounts of patient-specific physiological and physical information, to reveal diagnostic information and predict clinical outcomes, which enables personalising treatment for individuals.
Scanning technologies (MRI, CT, Echocardiography) are widely used, non invasive technique to create detailed images of organs and tissue in the body using strong magnetic fields or ultrasound to create 2D or 3D imagery.
Big Data
Big Data is the science of processing data that is too large, fast and complex to be analysed using traditional methods. With the advent of the internet and the internet of things, computers are dealing with extremely large quantities of data arriving in at an extremely fast rate and in a variety of complex formats (numbers, text, audio, video…). Big data seeks to capture, store and extract information from these kinds of data, with acceptable results and in an acceptable time. It englobes fields like statistical analysis and machine learning. Data analysis can help predict business trends, streamline user experiences, or build complex models of an individual’s hearts!
The paradigm shift in surgery is to plan the best healthcare provision adapted to our specific biological architecture and machinery. The combination of medical imagery with machine learning and omics science target for a better understanding of individuals as well as population health.
Interactive Architecture
Interactive architecture is the art/science of creating spaces and buildings that interact with their visitors. By incorporating sensors, processors and effectors in the core of the architecture,we can create intelligent spaces that acquire the ability to gather information from the physical space, understand it and act in consequence on it. This allows architects to create a real-time, personalised interaction between a space and its visitors – between a smart object and a smart subject. For us designers, they become a vector for interactive art. We aim to create ‘spaces’ that respond to our presence and help us understand complex notions of the physical and natural world that we are constantly interacting with.
