What about sound?
It’s a powerful medium and yet we rarely use it to capture our experiences, can that be changed?
In this age of social media, when some of us seem to share almost everything from our most troubling middle class problems to our toilet habits, there are, as I see it, three well established types of media that are shared the most. Photos, Video and Text.
When it comes to sharing experiences, these three rule the roost and with the likes of Instagram, Vine and Twitter, will do for some time.But there is one medium that most of us are luckily enough to be able to experience 24-7 and that often has the almost magical ability to bring memories back to life and ignite your imagination.
Sound.
When talking about sound, I’m not specifically talking about music tracks or spoken word, there’s Spotify and Soundcloud for that, I’m referring to the sounds of the world around us.
From the sound of a crowd cheering at a gig, to the lapping of waves on the sand of a faraway beach. These sounds can really define our experiences and yet, when we share them, sound is entirely forgotten (text and photo) or plays second fiddle to a normally quite shaky moving image in a video.
Sound can capture the very atmosphere of a place and when listened, can immediately immerse you and transport you somewhere else entirely- there’s a reason people listen to sounds of nature on those CD’s.
I came to the conclusions above quite some time ago and wanted to do something about it. I wanted to give the task of creating a social network based around sharing the sounds of the world (and our lives) at least a good shot.
At the time I didn't really have anywhere close to the skills I needed to bring this idea to fruition,but 2 years later, and possessing the skills I needed, Foundbite is becoming something quite exciting.
Foundbite is all about exploring sounds uploaded from all over the world and using sound to capture the atmosphere of events, places or everyday life. An interactive soundscape of the world, if you like.
The sounds are accompanied with photos to give them context (it’s no good having sound if you don’t know what you’re listening to) but the emphasis is still primarily on sound.
Rather than a video panning around a scene, these photos allow the creator to capture specific points of interest in a scene and allow some freedom for the viewer ( aided by the sound) to use their imagination.
It’s still early days, but beta testers are already using the app to capture some many varied sounds from rapids in Spokane to gigs in Norway and I find it fascinating to scroll around the world map and see, and more importantly, hear what it’s like to be in all these places.
I hope others do too.
->This is my first post on Medium, would love to hear some feedback and get some help improving my writing. jamesmundy@mendzapp.com
