CITY SOUNDS
Audio/visual simulation of an indicative inner city Melbourne precinct



SIAL Team:
    Lawrence Harvey
    Yamin Tengono
    Dominik Holzer
    Boo Chapple
    Jeffrey Hannam
    Jerome Frumar
    Foo Chi Sung


Project Team
Kim Leong (Social Science & Planning) Russell Webster (Noise Unit, City of Melbourne), Peter Dale (Applied Acoustics Group), Richard Minh Le, Budhi Prasetya
Full Team + Credit List located here

Links: Introduction | Screenshots | Download | F.A.Q. | Press | Links + Contacts | Credits

The full CitySounds report is available from Lawrence Harvey.
The executive summary and project background are available. Download here.

CitySounds - contents




CitySounds was developed for the City of Melbourne, to investigate individuals’ awareness and attitudes to sounds within the CBD. Like most contemporary cities seeking to promote a diverse and lively inner city culture, the Melbourne City Council is dealing with a diverse array of sound related issues affecting its residents, commercial operators, workers and visitors.

The Council required an instrument to collect a broader range of individual responses to acoustic conditions and aural experiences within the CBD than was currently available simply from noise complaints or further acoustical measurements.

Using the Auran Jet games engine, the staff in the SIAL Sound Studios developed an application combining a 3D model of an indicative Melbourne precinct, with detailed soundscape design and a series of embedded survey questions. Survey results are sent and collected online. The survey will be live for 6 months, finishing around February 2005.

Respondents can self-navigate the virtual precinct or be automatically ‘flown’ through it. By stepping through special visual markers, survey questions are activated on-screen. At each point, the questions relate to the soundscapes heard at that location, forming an immersive survey designed to maintain contextual cues about sound in an urban environment. When they have finished the virtual soundwalk, respondents can send their previously saved answers over the web to a server, where they are collected for later analysis.

CitySounds was developed in close consultation with Council so that results could assist future initiatives involving planning and design guidelines, consumer information campaigns, better handling of complaints, development of information for current and prospective residents on personal strategies for managing noise issues, and to trial new types acoustic design interventions in the city.

Results will be available to Council in early 2005 and papers on the project are currently in production.

For further details, contact lawrence.harvey@rmit.edu.au