99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-03- 99% Reality (only)

Episode Date: September 24, 2010

There’s not much that we can do about all the physical matter that’s been designed and built by someone else. It is the way it is. But with the advent of portable devices with GPS, a compass, and a network, … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Our modern world is determined by them. The architects, the designers, they decide how you experience the physical world.

But the ubiquity of smartphones with GPS, a compass, a network, and more computing power than we know what to do with, has created this new space where a new reality can lie on top of the physical, real world. It's an augmented reality and it adds a whole new level of creativity and design to the everyday world. Most augmented reality uses the smartphone's camera. You turn on the application, you hit the augmented reality button, and then you look through your phone's camera at the now labeled and visible, stars and planets in the daytime sky,

or another app could pop up cool info graphics with details about a bridge or a building. It's still in its infancy, but the possibility of experiencing a hidden world on top of the world in front of you is Tantalizing and so full of potential, but I personally like to augment my reality With sound and that brings us to the musical smartphone app called RJDJ We are you know combining the world around you with your listening experience. That's the founder of RJDJ Michael Bridenbroker. So, you know, the door closes and something really amazing acoustically could happen.

Robert Thomas is one of RJDJ's composers. RJDJ creates what we call reactive music, which is a new format of music, which changes in relation to what you're doing. RJDJ is comprised of scenes, which are analogous to songs but there are more like instructions for songs. There are bits of music, code for the phone's own built-in synthesizer, audio filters and these are triggered by the user according to the composer's plan for the scene.

I call this quantum composing. You think of all these different possible ways that it could be listened to and try to come up with lots of different ways that that will create something very interesting to happen in the music. When a sound coming in from your surrounding is very loud, you could have lots of really high notes kind of going. So sounds from the mic changes the song, but so does the accelerometer in the phone. That's the thing that senses movement, time spent listening can be a factor, and even GPS data can be incorporated. In all these stimuli work in concert to create a unique, augmented reality.

In the way you experience your city, will be altered from its basic form. I mean, you've walked around with music playing in your headphones and felt those moments of musical synchronicity that changed how you saw and felt about your surroundings. Imagine that times a thousand. Right now, RJDJ is mainly ambient pop and structured noise, but imagine what it could be. The world will become a playground for interaction designers. It kind of feels like you're seeing some inner beauty and everything, you know.

The most famous one that people get that from is the single the orgasm. This kind of harmonic overlay of a reality. This one's probably the girl. I had my wife make from these patented white earbuds to check out one of the scenes for the first time. Ahhh. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. It's what a stillgurder would hear at the stillgirder could hear.

It's kind of like being in a horror movie, but not quite horrible. I've been putting on a set of headphones to block out the rest of the world. RJ DJ listeners will plug into a constantly changing, unique soundscape that connects them to what they're doing and where they are in the world. I imagine walking around San Francisco listening to a mashed up composition of punk and hip-hop that gives me a history of the neighborhood I'm traveling through, and the GPS will trigger a sound clip from Out of Tishcock's Vertigo when I pass through Nop Hill. I'm having one right now, and the tempo will speed up as I scurry out of the way of an obnoxious bike messenger into the path when unnoticed, oncoming cable car.

My sudden lack of all movement as I lie on the pavement while is it a pleasing harmonic drone from the iPhone earbuds which will mix beautifully with the sirens from the paramedics as they approach. Stop! 99% Invisible is produced by me Roman Mars with support from Lunar. It's a project of KALW, the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco, and the Center for Architecture and Design.