Collecting Silence

The goal of this art and research project was to log and research the effects of silence. Both the psychological effects (is silence relaxing, inspiring?) as well as the environmental effects (what do silent places look like, what takes place?) In this project silence means the absence of the continuous stream of sounds as a result of human activity (traffic, industry.) Roberts visited various locations in which silence may be expected like: remote or enclosed places, (financially) unattractive places. She also visited ordinary sites at a special time or on a special day.

For this project a special research tool was developed, the SilenceCollector. Every ten seconds this device measures and logs the current decibel level, GPS location and skin conductance (the dampness of the skin is an indicator for stress). After an uninterrupted period of silence the device automatically takes a picture of the environment. Roberts took walks, searching for silence and wearing the device.

All results can be found on the Collecting Silence website. Data points are projected on an interactive Google map for every location. Every location is also linked to a multimedia scrapbook page which holds texts, pictures, sound and video recordings and background information about the location.

Awareness Lab: concept, database design, interaction design, web design, programming

In collaboration with and thanks to:Marius Klein: hardware engineering, firmware / Richard van Bemmelen: firmware, datatransfer software / Mia Trompenaars: design and production bag

Also made possible by: NBKS (province of Noord-Brabant), Fonds voor Beeldende kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst

Project website | Project blog