Description

S.O.U.P provides a visual and acoustic representation of the omnipresent wireless communication networks that surround us in urban spaces. think of it as a soup ladle spooning arbitrarily up the boiling air to transform the data into sound and video.

our application (coded in C) is a bridge between a wireless sniffer and any audiovisual software supporting OpenSoundControl (OSC) messages. a computer terminal shows a map of the surroundings plus basic points of reference of the city or town that hosts our installation. the observer can jump or fly from place to place in this representation of the cityscape and choose from different datasets recorded at different daytimes. the software will help provide visual and acoustic imaging.

PacketPunk meets the USRP

USRP

A bit more than a year ago Lorenz developed PacketPunk after the interest on working on packet sonification. There where already 2 other preceding projects I have been working on that could be used for mapping packets in sound. From zero, maping in more than a 2Dimensional style has been one of our [S.O.U.P] main motivation interest, During the next weeks I will attempt to set up a sound spatialization example that will integrate few FLOSS applications: Scapy, [promiscous~], packetpunk, with Traceroutes, pings and on the side of real-time sources I will use a radio scanner, a SDR (USRP), a VLF receiver and some electrosmog detectors. relevant links follow:

http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/
http://redmine.znerol.ch/wiki/packetpunk
http://www.auroralchorus.com/wr3gx.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio

Summer is here and there are 3 venues where this projects can meet and further develop with the possibility (depending mainly on sound tech conditions) that an audible sound layer will happen:

Berlin Breakthrough saturday 27th June 2009:
http://www.1010.co.uk/org/breakthrough.html

Vitry (Paris) Hacker Space Festival:
http://www.hackerspace.net/

and, Zurich's Roten Fabrik, where we will meet with !mediengruppe bitnik for a long day workshop:
http://www.poolloop.ch/

pd-extended 0.39.3 on the Alix Board

logo_berebe

Here you find quick and dirty instructions on installing Debian and pd-extended on the excelent Alix-Board. Gem, pdp, pidip and flext will be left out to minimize install size.

Plug-In a Bitnik Hack-a-day

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After a long run, we will have a nice chance to raise the spoon back in the air! We will have the chance to revisit and upgrade the SOUP with new condiments. Our comrades from Bitnik invited us to the Plug-In gallery in Basel for a Hack-a-Day workshop/presentation on the 10th of may. Read below to see and hear some of the results

BereBere (k2o) Intoxicated

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This project is a collaboration that began with colleagues in Colombia. It is strongly based in the use of S.O.U.P software (k2o aka kismet to OSC -OpenSoundControl-). There are plenty of data logs recorded in Medellin that can be replayed using k2oplay to represent the wireless and geopositional data as music or 3dimensional spaces. Please follow the link: http://www.berebere.randomlab.net/berebere/Datos

electrosmog


Even though I wanted to use the k2o software I ended up making up a video during my days at the Metavilla in Venice. A squatted pavillion during the architecture biennale. All was organized by EXYZT.org under the sign of Michel Onfray (french pavillion at the venice biennale of architecture 2006).

sister project

Yet another project: http://wificamera.propositions.org.uk/ that flows in similar lines to what motivated a project like k2o and to what can be done with it. It's even funny that this week at the ars electronica - electrolobby: http://electrolobby.org/ I will be working with an arduino and some servos to remote control (network based) an iSight camera (webcam). Hope to post some video or images soon.

gps 2 OSC in sonar (electronic music festival - barcelona)

TTSM

So i had the chance to use some of the soup developments again! This time in conjunction with the arduino board, some 4 servos, an old typewriter and the awkward idea of re-creating a tracklog that comes from digital realms straight to the inprint of ink and paper..the old analogic way..using a typewriter.. huh?? might be nostalgia but consider it an attempt on "dadataism", to cure my "archival fever" (see Derrida's book).

unstable flux?

set for fluxus

Brussels Midi Train Station, (December 13, 2005)

2p.m..late arrival to brussels, "forced" delay caused by a stop over night (++gintonic's) in Köln due to some curiosity to check the art school (www.khm.de) and chat with Siegfried Zielinski who generously handed his last book, a perefect train read, it's title Variantology, at 300kmh it introduces me in the mood for the next 4 intensive days. After all I was heading to follow a workshop of a software called "Fluxus"1, the book begins talking about Jhon Cage and his affairs, as hobby and as methodology with fungi. A precise read, in clear accordance to what was about to come up at f0am's (www.f0.am) headquarters.

OSC message reference

kismet sends lots of data gathered from the scanning process to its clients. k2o receives all the data and transforms similiar items into single osc messages (like position signal strength and so on). below are examples of messages received by k2orec with kismet-2005-08-R1: