An M.I.T. Media Lab grad student by the name of Noah Vawter has created a sort of anti-iPod that he calls Ambient Addition. It’s a small hand held device that samples surrounding sounds, chews them up, and spits them back out looped, effected, and harmonized to create an auto-adapting ambient soundtrack to the user’s environment.
Although the masses won’t likely find it as charming as he does, it does seem like a fun little toy that I wouldn’t mind borrowing for an afternoon. If you live in the Boston area, I suspect you can track it down by following Thom Yorke’s trail of drool.
His self-made demonstration video is difficult to watch and offers very little ear candy, but here it is anyway:
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For a better explanation and plenty more clips, check out the March 12th episode of the New Scientist Podcast. You can download it directly here. The segment begins at about 9:45 in.
A New York Times article on Vawter and his strange little device can be found here.
