The Sound of the World, According to a Teapot

This was a one-off project for PIFCamp 2023, but it has the potential to be re-vived at some point.

Originally I wanted to build a DIY binaural dummy head microphone, as commercial ones come at a price that prohibits experimentation in nature (like, lowering the microphone into a crevice or gorge, or put it out in the rain). Decent microphone capsules, on the other hand, are relatively affordable.

Then I thought, why should the human head always be the reference? What if I make something more modular and build a set of ear-shaped microphones that I can stick to anything? That'd allow me to explore the sound of the world from the perspective of non-human entities, such as teapots, or plants, or bridges, while maintaining a certain binaural quality.

In fact, looking at the world from the perspective of things, rather than humans, seems to be a recent trend in UX research (see i.e. here). If we can make things talk, we should be able to make things listen, right? Thus, the project became: building oddly-shaped microphones from decent capsules, and stick them to anything I can find, to explore the sound of the world from a not-totally-human perspective.

The recordings can be found on freesound.org.

Teapot microphone:

Umbrella microphone:

The microphone mounts still exist:

More images of the microphones can be found here.