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The Making of myCitySounds
myCitySounds: an interactive visualization and soundmap of audio samples recorded in the dynamic and ever-changing Mission district of San Francisco. Each recording session occurred while walking between the Stamen Design studio and the Gray Area theater on Mission Street.
Project Origins
Back in 2012, I was on a mid-career grad school adventure…in Computer Science. As part of a research project, I started exploring sound mapping and audio analysis. I was interested in how much noise pollution I experienced in my day to day life, and developed an Android app to continuously take one second recordings, every minute, of every day, for several weeks.
What were the noisiest times in my day? My data visualizations were simple summaries of my research results. They also suggested a fault in my data collection methods. I was using the phone’s built in microphone, which is optimized for filtering out background noise. I wasn’t recording the noise pollution in my life. I was actually tracking my most conversational times.
While researching prior work and similar projects, I discovered Stamen Design and their TenderNoise project. I’ve been a fan of their…
