Soundwalk is a location-based audio tour: as you walk around the city, you hear sounds as you pass through the streets, presenting a fundamentally different urban experience.
If you’re in Hanoi, where the company is based, you might hear sounds of the city’s hidden past, stories from local residents, ambient environmental sounds conjuring a different space and time, even music performed by unseen musical troupes.
After a successful, unfunded first run last year where the Soundwalk team helped visually impaired children navigate Hanoi, they were able to secure funding to expand the project to Copenhagen, Denmark.
Now they’re raising money to hire two local composers, one in Hanoi and one in Copenhagen, to create soundtracks for these cities.
Here’s a bit more information about how it all works:
“At its core, the Soundwalk is a smartphone app and a map of sounds. To explore a Soundwalk, you need headphones, and the phone must be equipped with GPS and other location technologies. When you open a Soundwalk map, sounds will be played as if you are hearing them from a point, like surround sound, except the arena is the real world! That means when you move around the sounds will appear to be coming from a particular location, and you can discover other sounds as you walk.”
To learn more about the crowdfunding and to donate visit: http://j.mp/soundwalk-igg.
Donations will go towards covering Soundwalk’s development and administrative costs which include completing the app on time; flights to Denmark and payment for the composers.
While there are no confirmed dates yet for the app’s release, the Soundwalk team said that it will happen this Autumn if they are able to meet their funding goals.
