About

UrbanRemix is a collaborative and locative sound project. Our goal in developing UrbanRemix was to design a platform and series of public workshops that would enable participants to develop and express the acoustic identity of their communities, and enable users of the website to explore and experience the soundscapes of the city in a novel fashion.

The UrbanRemix platform consists of a mobile phone system and web interface for recording, browsing, and mixing audio. It allows users to document and explore the obvious, neglected, private or public, even secret sounds of the urban environment. Participants in the UrbanRemix workshops become active creators of shared soundscapes as they search the city for interesting sound cues. The collected sounds, voices, and noises provide the original tracks for musical remixes that reflect the specific nature and acoustic identity of the community.

The project draws upon long-standing aesthetic practices that bring real-world sounds into electronic works, such as musique concréte, acoustic ecology, and the chance approaches of John Cage, as well as practices in public art and relational aesthetics that structure new forms of engagement and collaboration between artists, designers and citizens. Its innovative contribution is in the combination of these aesthetic approaches with current technological trends in location-aware mobile applications and in digital performance and interactive art.

The project was conceived of and is directed by Jason Freeman, Michael Nitsche, and Carl Disalvo, who are professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia. It is made possible by the invaluable work of numerous students and designers, and supported in part by the Music Technology program, the Digital Media program, and the GVU center at Georgia Tech.

To date, the UrbanRemix project has mounted events in collaboration with the Atlanta Beltline "Art on the Beltline" project, the City Centered festival and Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, the Atlanta Public Schools and Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, and the Times Square Arts Alliance in New York. Several Atlanta based artists are also using the UrbanRemix platform for the creation of site-specific audio-works and locative media performances.

If you have any questions about the project or would like to include the project in a festival or exhibition, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Jason Freeman: http://www.jasonfreeman.net email: jason [dot] freeman [at] music [dot] gatech [dot] edu
Michael Nitsche: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~cdisalvo3/ email: michael [dot] nitsche [at] lcc [dot] gatech [dot] edu
Carl DiSalvo: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nitsche/ email: carl [dot] disalvo [at] lcc [dot] gatech [dot] edu

Project Team:
Carl DiSalvo
Jason Freeman
Michael Nitsche
Matt Gilbert
David Jimison
Anirudh Venkataramanan
Harikrishna Narayanan
Stephanie Yang
Andrew Roberts
Meghashyam Adoni
Stephen Garrett
Gilberto Gaxiola
Akito Van Troyer
Trishul Mallikarjuna
Andrew Beck
Aaron Albin
Thomas Barnwell
Andrew Colella
Samuel Defilipp
Oliver Jan
Vamsi Mynampati
Ryan Nikolaidis
Avinash Sastry
Sertan Senturk
Jenifer Vandagriff
Andrew Willingham

supported by
Turner Broadcasting
GVU Center at Georgia Tech
Intel Foundation
Georgia Tech Foundation
Google

Content on the Urban Remix web site is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/). Please reference the Urban Remix web site (http://urbanremix.gatech.edu) in any works which incorporate content from this site.