Select any geographic location in the world to which you would like to add an audio landscape.
Activate the area by overlaying polygons containing virtual "speakers" of continuous audio, typically music.
Optionally, seed the area with curated content, arranged in relation to the landscape and other content.
And finally, release the project to the public and allow participants to add their own recordings to mix with the continuous audio layer and the curated content.
an open, flexible, distributed framework which collects, stores, organizes and re-presents audio content.
It lets you collect audio from anyone with a smartphone or web access, upload it to a central repository along with its metadata and then filter it and play it back collectively in continuous audio streams.
Roundware is an actively-developed open-source project and is free for anyone to use. It was initially developed for sound art installations, but has since been used for innovative museum audio tours as well as other educational purposes.
Soon, Roundware will be expanded to include not only audio, but video, photos and text as well.
Scapes is an installation by sound artist, Halsey Burgund that uses Roundware to augment the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum's gardens with a layer of audio.
Roundware creates continuous, unique audio experiences for participants rather than a series of discrete audio events triggered by location.
Audio is mixed on the fly and constantly updated by client inputs.
Contributions to Roundware projects can be heard immediately after submission.
Make a recording on your phone, upload it and wait for a few seconds in the same location and your contribution will filter into the mix.
The central goal of Roundware is to create meaningful aesthetic experiences, not simply demonstrate new technology.
Hence the entire system is designed to allow creators and participants to sculpt the experience to their liking.
Roundware was built to solve an art problem.
In 2009, nothing existed to create evolving, contributory, location-based audioscapes, so Roundware was born and has steadily improved since then for applications well beyond art.
Email: contact@roundware.org
Twitter: @hburgund