Sonic Kayak sonification project Day One.

Wednesday 29th April.  I should be in Penryn, Cornwall, UK with Dave Griffiths and Amber Griffiths in the FoAM studio. Instead we are COVID resicted and so are setting up virtual sonification labs to be able to realise this stage of our 2020 research : to add two new environmental pollution sensors onto the Sonic Kayak.   These are to read air pollution (PM) and turbidity/cloudiness of the water.  Funded by the Horizon 2020 ACTION programme, we are lucky to still be able to work on it, although how we’re going to manage this virtually, we’ll figure out as we go along.  (Background to the project)

From this end there are two central situations to tackle :-

1.  How to create sound material that is not only interesting to the Citizen Scientist paddler,  but that conveys understanding as to what is actually going on underwater or in the air as the data is read onboard and correspondingly morphs the sounds chosen through the Sonic Kayak.
2. To gain an understanding of the technical system we develop so that the air quality sensor used can also be mounted into the Sonic Bike system.  Yes.  This is also the warm up for the making of the Environmental Bike. Inspired by sensor work with FoAM September 2019, the intended outcome being for riders to be able to investigate neighbourhoods from bikes,  gathering air quality data and creating new compositions as they go.