INTRO
Biorhythms is a real-time electroacoustic work, serially based on the hidden rhythms and melodies than underpin our daily lives. The soundscape questions the nature of acoustic space, place and identity in urban environments.
Central to the project is the concept of Big Data, the growing body of information that represents our daily lives. Biorhythms uses real-time data sonification to provide an on-going aural projection of the cycles and processes that underpin movement and habitation. The current implementation utilises the ‘Tfl unified API’ to provide up to the minute data relating to the flow of London’s hidden infrastructure.
THEORY AND CONTEXT
Our modern cities are increasingly becoming living, breathing life forms. The pursuit of ‘smart’ lives frames these ecosystems of movement, habitation, and co-dependence in the digital cloud that represents our reality. Like a physical body, our smart cities take life from the blood that flows through their veins, the traffic in their arteries and the movement, habitation and coexistence of their populations. As technology develops, knowledge becomes key to adaption and the co-evolution of man, machine and infrastructure. “…a radically new kind of “knowledge infrastructure” is materializing. A new era of Big Data is emerging….” The Biorhythms project seeks to sonify the beating of our great urban hearts, providing a familiar, culturally aware and thought provoking real-time installation, exhibiting and celebrating the hidden rhythms and melodies that contribute to our acoustic environment. “The real-time city is real! As layers of networks and digital information blanket urban space, new approaches to the study of the built environment are emerging. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed” (MIT: Sensible City Lab, 2016)
Jon Pigrem 