Hørbar / Audiobar

Interactive Environment

Hørbar/Audiobar is a responsive environment for exploring a huge collection of audio art. You interact with the sounds using a tangible interface: By placing bottles on a table.
The bottle- and bar-metaphor was chosen to facilitate social interaction between the visitors at the Hørbar/Audiobar

The environment consists of two rooms: A bar-room for playful collective interaction and a study lounge for deeper explorations in solitude.

Room 1: The bar
The bar consist of a central table and 260 bottles places on shelves.
The bottles all have colorful labels. The labels indicate the content of the bottle; one bottle can contain mostly noise, one can contain “80%vocals”, and another “20% rhythm”. There are 12 different categories of labels and they are easily recognizable by color. Some labels are black with white lettering; this type of bottle contains a “periode” – e.g. 1960-1965.

pictogram

The action begins when a visitor places one or more bottles on the table. The light below the semitransparent table changing color from green to bright blue. After less than a second audio begins to play and the table is lit by white light. If other visitor places additional bottles, the table blinks again. And a track is selected that fits the combination of bottles. If all bottles are removed, the table returns to its silent state with a green illumination.

Room 2: The study
Two monitors and two set of headphones are available in a second smaller room. These monitors display the title and artist of the last 10 tracks played in the bar. When the visitor selects a track, a page gives more in deep information about this track. At the same time the track is played in the headset. The visitor can also chose to get a list of all available tracks by the same artist. These tracks can also be explored in the study

The technology
The installation is based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. Each bottle is tagged with a small and inexpensive RFID-tag. The reader-hardware within the table checks which bottles are currently positioned on the table.
Placing a bottle on the table initiates request to a database. This request is based on “fuzzy”logics and audio tracks in proximity to the requested value are returned.
Combining bottles on the bar issues a combined request – a fuzzy “AND” operation. Up till 4 bottles can be combined at a time. This is a restriction of the range of the RFID-antenna, not the software.

The sounds
The sounds in the Hørbar/Audiobar are all from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. This museum has an immense collection of international audio-art from 1890 to today. A major part of this collection has been digitized as high quality 320 Kbit/s MP3 files. These files can now be explored interacting with the Hørbar/Audiobar.
The entire collection was indexed and described according to 12 bipolar emotional parameters. This was done to Jesper Steen Andersen, who spend the year 2006 listening to all the track and tried to fit them within our system of description. A special indexing software tool was developed to make this task possible.

Location & Portable version
Since January 2007 the installation has been hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art.
During Fall 2007 the original version will be exhibited at ZKM in Germany as part of the "YOU_ser" exhibition curated by Peter Weibel.

In April 2007 a portable version of the installation was build (nicknamed the “Camping Hørbar”). This version makes it possible to exhibit the “Hørbar/Audiobar” outside the museum and to present the bar to a wider audience. This bar can be dismounted, the software is running on a single computer and only 100 bottles are available.
The portable version has been presented at the following event:

"Klanken aan 't Ij", Amsterdam, September 2008.
“Sound Days”, Copenhagen, June 2006.
“Knock Knock Conference”, Aarhus, June 2006.
“Festival of Research”, Copenhagen, April 2006.

Further documentation
You can see a short video from the ZKM exhibition at vernissage.tv

Video available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtoEcjE1Bd4

A good tool is an invisible tool. By invisible, I mean that the tool does not intrude on your consciousness; you focus on the task, not the tool. Eyeglasses are a good tool -- you look at the world, not the eyeglasses. The blind man tapping the cane feels the street, not the cane.

Unfortunately, our common metaphors for computer interaction lead us away from the invisible tool, and towards making the tool the center of attention.
Take multimedia. The idea, as near as I can tell, is that people already spend hours a week at home watching television, so clearly television is attractive, and we want our computer interfaces to be attractive, so let's put TV into them.

Invisible technology needs a metaphor that reminds us of the value of invisibility, but does not make it visible. I propose childhood: playful, a building of foundations, constant learning, a bit mysterious and quickly forgotten by adults.

"The world is not a desktop", Mark Weiser 1993.

Supported by:

Kulturarvsstyrelsen
The Heritage Agency of Denmark

Sound Forum Øresund
The Sonning Foundation

Team:
Mogens Jacobsen
Morten Søndergaard
Tine Seligmann
Jesper Steen Andersen
Morten Jaeger

Thanks to:
Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde
Enrico Passetti
Salomet Grafik
Trossen Robotics

Photos:
Mogens Jacobsen
Morten Søndergaard

Technical documentation:
Download chart as PDF (82Kb)