Undersound is a new project to distribute music around the London Underground trains. Users can upload songs from their collections to centralized distribution points, and download tracks left by other users. The system keeps tack of which tracks came from what station –this is a public-transit version of the "Traffic Napster" that appears in my novel, Eastern Standard Tribe.
undersound will be spatially distributed at individual stations and throughout the wider tube network. I can add music to the system at upload points in the ticket halls , and I can download tracks on the platforms. Architectural configuration of the stations affects my experience of contributing and downloading music as the proximal nature of the interaction with these situated points require s myself and other undersound users to congregate at certain locations within the station for the purpose of interacting with the system.
Each track in the undersound system will be tagged with its place of origin (the station where it was uploaded) and this information is visible as the track is being played. This may trigger memories and musings around my personal relationship to that place. Is there also a correlation between the flow of people around the tube network and the flow of music tracks around the undersound network? What might a sense of place for these digital artefacts be? Do they care about geographical location too or might their sense of place revolve around the quality and type of network and the technological devices they pass through?
(Thanks, Akshat and Dillo!)
