Recently, I had the opportunity to experience the feeling of being live. In this lecture with Dawn Scarfe, we tested and experimented with the Locus Sonus Platform – also known as LOCUSTREAM, it is a project meant to be used worldwide by all types of users, dedicated to the sharing of local (or current time) soundscapes. It is as accessible as providing your cell phone’s microphone as a sound receiver, and lately, stream by the same source to the world. It comes also with a map which shows all the online microphones around the world.
It was interesting to hear all these different streams from different users around the world, and also to merge them. There was also an interesting, yet unintentional feature that came up the stream, which was the 6-second-delay, that would make your recent past self. The main point of this project was to question ‘traditional’ listening and compositional practices where audio content is pre-determined. My doubts came in this phase. How can this radio experience be so authentical? If it was said that all listenings weren’t live, all the listener’s expectations would disappear, because it was no longer “live”. What makes live be live? Is this the way to explore the full meaning of this type of format? In my opinion, it is interesting to see such a big movement behind streaming homemade soundscapes, but the pre-determined factor is a bit wick, considering that the placement of the microphone is not particularly random and that could be determined what is being listened to. The fact, it was asked to place our cell phones pointing to a window or outdoor is an “artistic” decision. Determinism shouldn’t be used as a way to dissimulate live performance. I didn’t want to fall into a cliché, but everything is determined.