Social Sound Fetish
Social Positioning via Sound

2003

Werner Jauk (AT)
Jörg Dieber
Doris Jauk-Hinz
Herwig Stieber
Fränk Zimmer
GEWI Lab

Users design a sound that corresponds to their own personality and level of excitement. This sound initially appears as a point on a computer screen; its form and color are then customized and it is enriched with personal behavioral data. Terminals located in different cities make up a network in which the sounds undergo constant change due to reciprocal interaction. The result is a shared, fluid sound sculpture. By listening in on this, users can experience their social behavior on the basis of virtual sounds.



The sound’s basic qualities—perceived primarily as exciting—are depicted by a simple graphic interface that enables it to be manipulated. The user gives a sound its own pitch, volume and tonal coloration, an internal structure of the acoustic mix that makes it possible to produce an individualized, personal sound. Before the sound is left to its virtual existence in a virtual social space, the user endows it for its life spent among other sounds with fundamental parameters of his/her own communicational behavior.

The shape of the sound changes in the network through contact with others. The user can follow the life of his/her sound in the network and experience the transformation of its essence and the company it keeps.

A project produced for Graz 2003 – Cultural Capital of Europe – in collaboration with the Department of Music of Karl Franzens University Graz.