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Plane Old Boring Sounds? No Way!

This coming April, as part of the Europeana Creative project, the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision will release a prototype of a social field recording app. The application will feature sounds of Amsterdam, planes and birds recorded in the Netherlands as well as sounds of London and birds from the British Library.

Post written by Gregory Markus and Lizzy Komen

The app aims to make the underrepresented realm of field recordings available on Europeana more visible, and richer through crowd sourcing enrichment. Europeana Creative’s goal is to support and promote the re-use of cultural resources available via Europeana through the development of 5 different pilot applications (history education, natural history, tourism, social networks, and design). These applications showcase how creative industries and cultural institutions can combine forces to design tools and apps that users can use not only to view cultural heritage objects but also become more actively engaged.

Somewhat similar to Geluid van Nederland (Sound of the Netherlands), developed in 2012 by Sound & Vision, De Auditieve Dienst and Kennisland, this new application will utilize project partner History Pin’s (UK) map/timeline interface and “pin” geotagged sounds in their appropriate locations. Sound & Vision has been working closely with Ontotext to ensure that our sounds are accurately geotagged.

Not just a “Flyby” App

For this pilot we will engage relevant communities to enrich these sounds with content from Europeana, Wikimedia and other internet sources. One of the communities we plan on approaching are people interested in planes, such as Dutch plane spotters. Plane spotting is well known in the Netherlands and Schiphol airport is one of the best European airports for it. Our sound collection features an array of plane sounds and airport announcements that we feel will interest plane enthusiasts. We hope that individuals will add images, information, videos and links from relevant websites to these sounds, making the app a rich and interactive knowledge sharing device while also being a platform for dialogue where users can talk about specific items.


Challenge

This pilot application will be featured as part of an open ‘Challenge event’, taking place in September 2014, where the pilot will serve as template and inspiration for programmers and creatives. We plan that our pilot will elicit more social cultural heritage apps that take cultural heritage objects from being static pieces to active parts of cultural communities.

Stay posted to the Sound & Vision R&D blog as well as the Europeana Creative website for more info about the pilot’s development.

More info