The Quiet Walk (TQW), is an interactive mobile artwork initiated by Alessandro Altavilla for sonic explorations of urban space. The goal of TQW is to find the “quietest place”. An interface on the mobile device directs the user to avoid noisy areas of the city, giving directions to find quiet zones. Data collected by the system generates a geo- acoustic map of the city that facilitates the personal recollection of sonic memories. The system is comprised of two components; an iPhone running a custom application programmed in openFrameworks, and a web server collecting the GPS and acoustical data. A heatmap of city sounds is constructed collaboratively by participants. An example can be found here.

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Neurotic Armageddon Indicator V1.0 from tom schofield on Vimeo.

Neurotic Armageddon Indicator (NAI) is an installation artwork which visualises the ‘Doomsday Clock’, a symbolic clock maintained by an academic journal, ‘The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’. The Doomsday Clock represents the proximity to armageddon expressed as minutes to midnight where midnight represents nuclear holocaust. The clock is ‘set’ by a panel of scientists and experts at long intervals, usually years apart. The artwork is in two pieces. One is a small computer programme running on a server which ‘scrapes’ the content of the bulletins home page as often as possible. The software checks the current status of the clock and then sends the results over the internet to the second part of the work, a small wall clock which displays the time of the Doomsday Clock on a red LED clock display. This process repeats as fast possible so that the device shows in near-real-time the status of the doomsday clock. At the time of writing, it is currently five minutes to midnight.

NAI is also being developed to provide a locus point for discussion of the end of the world. To this end I have developed a second indicator which can be set by participants at any time, over the web. Their time will feed into a physical clock located in Culture Lab, Newcastle, UK and they may justify their input and contribute to a time line, similar to the one published by the bulletin of atomic scientists.

null by morse from tom schofield on Vimeo.

Overview
A series of messages are send using an antique morse signalling lamp. The messages refer to the inter-related histories of morse code, disaster and war and include the final transmissions of the titanic and the first ever message publicly sent via morse' "what hath God wrought?". The messages are decoded via an ios/android app.

mark inscriber is a data sculpture/sonification project. A horizontal bar supports a carriage with a firing chisel blade. The lateral movement is controlled by a stepper motor and chain system. The carriage advances a little at a time while the chisel blade cuts deep incisions into the wall.

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vertical mark making is the earliest known form of recorded counting. As systems of counting developed in complexity, new methods of grouping marks were found. mark inscriber explores the relationship between these groupings and modern programming and mathematics by hammering numbers counted in different bases into the wall, performing an act of counting with no object.

drive_in is an interactive art installation that makes use of visitors' mobile phones and a number of tiny custom-made infrared cinema screens.

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The mobile phone camera has become ubiquitous, slowly replacing compacts for everyday photography as the mobile itself has, for many people, replaced the landline. drive_in exploits the capacity of all mobile phone cameras to see infrared light. This is possible due to cost saving measures in mobile production which leads to relatively poor filtering. drive_in allows visitors to reveal otherwise invisible video content by using their mobile phone cameras. Audio for each screen is transmitted by a very short range fm transmitter (such as an iTrip) which can be picked up using the mobiles' radio.