These headphones sound sort of fun, in an artsy-way, and in fact are not an original idea, but I personally enjoy the juxtaposition of random iTunes offerings on my iPod and the urban infrastructure. I don't turn the volume up so loud as to drown everything out (which would be dangerous on a bike), I just enhance my movie with a soundtrack.
The Ambient Walkman A graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab has created a pair of headphones that tunes the listener back in to the world around him.The device, which Vawter calls Ambient Addition, consists of two headphones with transparent earpieces, each equipped with a microphone and a speaker. The microphones sample the background noise in the immediate vicinity — wind blowing through the trees, traffic, a cellphone conversation. Then, with the help of a small digital signal-processing chip, the headphones make music from these sounds. For instance, percussive sounds like footsteps and coughs are sequenced into a stuttering pattern, and all the noises are tuned so that they fuse into a coherent, slowly changing set of harmonies.
Tags: electronics
