Priti Pandurangan — Information Experience Designer

I'm undertaking a series of walks to better understand strategies for observing, collecting, and recording multi-sensory information around us. This research draws from psychogeography, placemaking, and embodied methodologies, seeking to understand the nuances of place through movement, stillness, and shared experiences. I explore how constraint, collaboration, and attention shape our relationship with place.

25.03.23 | Cafe OTO | Organised by Soundcamp

Keeping myself open to input from outside design circles has been another source of inspiration and serendipity. I participated in a workshop hosted by Soundcamp, an artist’s collective which investigates long-duration listening in the context of the environment and ecology (Soundcamp, no date).

A streambox is a small, DIY device that captures live environmental sound and streams it online. They are built with a Raspberry Pis, an audio sensor, and a microphone that captures and streams sounds in real-time over the radio.

Once the streamboxes were up and running, we took them outside to test them in the surrounding area. I used the device on a short data walk around the neighbourhood to capture ecological sounds. It picked up passing traffic, fragments of conversation, birds and the background hum of the city. I felt gently ushered into a new way of listening and wondering how sensors like these could potentially reduce the overwhelm and anxiety of capturing information during my sensory walks.

Technologies like this can support forms of knowledge that are sensory, situated, and shared. Building such tools together is very much a part of that knowledge production.