Turning water pollution into audiolized awareness

Brian House collected polluted water with acid mine drainage in the Tshimologong Precinct, Johannesburg and translated pollution levels to sound:

Acid Love comprises vessels of AMD gathered from a mine on the outskirts of the city. These are connected in an electrical circuit that measures the conductivity from the metals of the water and coverts it into sound. The sound is further modulated by data gathered from remediation efforts at the mine. The installation itself also performs a remediation process—over time the metals will precipitate to the bottom of the vessels, and both the sound and the color of the water will change as it is purified.

[via @blprnt]

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Listen to soundtrack based on FedEx shipment tracking

FedEx (yes, the shipping company) put up an interactive piece that audiolizes a package’s journey, based on its origination and where it passes through. Either put in your own tracking number or just enter your own locations. I’m not sure I get a ton out of the sound variation, because I don’t know what I’m listening to exactly, but I like the aesthetic. Plus it’s fun.

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Making a hit song with Bieber, Diplo, and Skrillex

Making a hit by NYT

The New York Times got me to watch an interview with Justin Bieber in it multiple times. Along with (mostly) Diplo and Skrillex, a visual layer set on top of the video interview further explains what the musicians are talking about.

Here, just watch it.

Then compare that with another New York Times piece from 2012, which happens to interview another producer who worked with Bieber. Today's piece seems so much more refined, even though the older interactive seemed to work really well at the time.

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Hearing color instead of seeing it

Artist Neil Harbisson is completely colorblind, so he sees in black and white. But he still perceives color. Harbisson has an implant in the back of his head that's essentially an antenna with a color sensor attached. The sensor signals are transposed to audio and he listens through bone conduction.

Watch in the short video below, where he describes it as feeling a sort of energy.

Harbisson also gave a TED talk in 2012 where he goes into more detail about how he hears color, and at the beginning you can hear what he does. Because his vision and hearing kind of meld into one experience, it also works the other way around. Voices “look” like certain colors, and instead of dressing in a way that looks nice to him, he dresses to sound nice.

On top of that, Harbisson added infrared and ultraviolet perception after he was done with the color wheel.

That is, well, unperceivable.

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