Roundware

Roundware data visualization

halsey — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:07:58 +0000

We are looking for some help creating data analysis and visualization tools for the new Roundware upgrades we have been madly working on for the Smithsonian. If you are a front-end web developer with some experience in analyzing and displaying data in useful, beautiful and creative ways, please get in touch!

Here are some details:

Roundware is open-source so much of your work will be distributed as such
because it is open-source, we want to use open and free tools as much as possible
among others, we’ll be using: html5, jquery, ajax, javascript, django, php, python, mysql
technical skills are important, but Roundware has it’s origins in art and music, so we are hoping to find developers who bring their own design ideas (aesthetic and functional) to the project
the budget is for project-by-project contract work, starting fairly small and growing as needed

We collect a ton of information (all anonymous, of course) about how people use Roundware and the Smithsonian has particular interest in being able to look at the data in meaningful ways. As “America’s Institution”, they are always trying to better understand how the public interacts with them so that they can improve their offerings.

Here are some projects that use Roundware for your reference:

Stories from Main Street: app | website
Mountain Ghosts: app | info | video
Scapes: app | info | review

If you are interested or have questions, give us a shout at contact at roundware dot org. Thanks!

dot com

halsey — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:18:51 +0000

We recently procured roundware.com and though we have no plans to use it in the near future (it points back to roundware.org for now), we are happy to have it off the market and under our control. We tried to get it when we obtained roundware.org, but it was owned by someone else, and it turns out, not surprisingly, that the someone else was a domain aggregator.

Thankfully, the knowledge that no one else in their right minds would ever want roundware.com gave us the confidence to be very strict in the negotiations. So we got it with funds commensurate with an open-source artistic software project. Perhaps in the future we will use it to offer a hosted Roundware service to museums, artists and such…who knows.

Trademark

halsey — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:12:03 +0000

The ‘Roundware’ trademark application is officially in process. Shockingly, not only is ’roundware’ not a word with existing trademark claims of any sort, but as best we can tell, it isn’t a word being used in any capacity for anything at all. At least not anything else on the internet. There are some random websites that peddle “round ware”, but that is usually referring to some sort of china, porcelain or something to eat off of.

So our application should sail through the USPTO as smoothly as anything, but it will still probably take 6 months until we are official.

Mountain Ghosts

halsey — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:08:26 +0000

Mountain Ghosts is a sound art installation at the University of Colorado which was on exhibit throughout their campus in Colorado Springs in the fall of 2011. This installation used Roundware to distribute a site-specific musical composition throughout campus as well as collect participant commentary to mix with the music.

Several hundred audio ghosts now populate this beautiful landscape.

What is Roundware?

halsey — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:17:32 +0000

Roundware is a flexible, distributed framework which collects, stores, organizes and re-presents audio content. Basically, it lets you collect audio from anyone with a smartphone or web access, upload it to a central repository along with its metadata and then filter it and play it back collectively in continuous audio streams.

With Roundware, you can:

collect audio from participants via iOS, Android and web-based devices
tag collected audio with location information as well as any additional project-based metadata such as age, gender or occupation
create a seamless location-sensitive layer of audio comprised of musical elements and participant commentary in any geographic space
organize an ever-growing collection of participant contributed audio information
serve individualized audio streams to users in a flexible non-linear way based on participant inputs

Roundware is an actively-developed open-source project and is free for anyone to use. It was initially developed for sound art installations, but has since been used for innovative museum audio tours as well as other educational purposes.

Soon, Roundware will be expanded to include not only audio, but video, photos and text as well.

Scapes video

halsey — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:55:13 +0000

This is video documentation of Halsey Burgund’s Scapes installation at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. It shows a real live use of Roundware. During a 6-month period, over 850 recordings were made throughout the sculpture park and several thousand people participated by walking around and controlling their own personal audio stream with their path.

Scapes

halsey — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:30:20 +0000

Scapes is a sound installation at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA which augments the physical landscape of the park with a location-sensitive layer of audio. This audio layer contains a mixture of instrumental music and spoken voices – contributed by participants – both of which are influenced by the participant’s location within the sculpture park. As such, the participant’s body becomes the primary mode of interaction with this project; as they move through the park, they control how their individual audioscape unfolds by shifting the instrumental music and “running into” audio left by other participants. Museum visitors will use a handheld wireless device and headphones with which they can listen to audio as well as make their own recordings which will be immediately assimilated into the piece for everyone to hear.

More details…

Ocean Voices

halsey — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:21:21 +0000

Ocean Voices is a collaboration between sound artist Halsey Burgund and marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols designed to collect spoken voice recordings from people around the world responding to a few personal questions about the ocean, including:

How does the ocean affect you on a daily basis?
Describe a world without oceans.
What does it feel like to be in the ocean?

The voice collection process was tackled using Roundware in addition to more traditional methods, such as in-person interviews. Roundware is used on oceanvoices.org as well as in the OV iOS and Android apps.

Roundware was vital to OV given that it allowed for the collection of voices on a global scale with a very small budget. Building the apps and the website enabled anyone on the planet with internet access to contribute their comments about the ocean. The ocean is the largest feature on this planet, effecting every human being, so giving everyone the opportunity to participate was a key philosophy behind Ocean Voices.

Ocean Voices has both artistic and conservation goals.

to bring together a global community to emphasize how ocean conservation is a global issue
to focus on the individual and the individual’s thoughts about the ocean, making it very personal and therefore more impactful
to bring together the creative/musical/artistic world with the environmental world, thereby broadening the audience and increasing accessibility
to actively solicit grassroots participation from a wide variety of geographic and demographic groups and encourage cross-pollination of ideas

You can learn more about Ocean Voices and how it uses Roundware at the OV website or by downloading the iOS or Android OV apps.

ROUND

halsey — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:11:15 +0000

This is where it all started. Yes, Roundware was named after the ROUND installation. And the ROUND installation was named after both King Arthur and Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

ROUND, on exhibit in 2008, was the first participatory audio installation Halsey Burgund ever created in a museum. It was commissioned by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and used pre-smartphone mobile networked devices to allow museum visitors to leave audio comments about the museum’s artworks as well as hear those of other museum visitors, artists and curators. The voices were combined with music into individualized audio experiences intended to democratize opinions about art.

Way back in 2007 when ROUND was conceived, the technological platform to accomplish this piece was not in place, so Roundware was born. It has come a long way from these beginnings, but the philosophy of collecting opinions and experiences from people and re-distributing them is still at the core of the Roundware project.

ROUND interface on mobile device

Halsey Burgund

halsey — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:54:56 +0000

Roundware is Halsey’s fault.

He is a musician and sound artist living outside Boston and has been working on Roundware in the context of his sound installations since 2007. Roundware originated as the technical infrastructure for his sound art installation ROUND, on exhibit at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in mid-2008. Roundware was expanded dramatically to include location-awareness and other benefits for Halsey’s 2010 exhibition Scapes at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. This piece allowed participants to augment the physical landscape of the museum’s sculpture park by leaving audio commentary in locations of their choosing for other participants to hear.

All of Halsey’s installations and musical performances make extensive use of spoken human voice recordings as musical elements, alongside traditional and electronic instruments. He collects these voices from otherwise uninvolved individuals whom he records in various locations, from museums to street corners to rock clubs.

Halsey also has a band, aesthetic evidence, with which he performs his music publicly, often including interactive performances in which he records audience members’ voices and uses those recordings improvisationally within songs.

Halsey’s website