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    Sound Taxi turns London street noise into live music

    Sound Taxi turns London street noise into live music

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    Headphone developer AiAiAi and designer Yuri Suzuki have teamed up to create the Sound Taxi — a speaker-equipped black cab that converts London street noise into music.

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    sound taxi

    Headphone developer AiAiAi and designer Yuri Suzuki have teamed up to create the Sound Taxi — a speaker-equipped black cab that converts London street noise into music. Any surrounding horn blares, sirens, or ambient chatter are picked up by a microphone attached to the car's roof, and fed into software developed by sound designer Mark McKeague. This program then analyzes each sample and uses Ableton Live to convert it into music. The resulting tones are then played through the Sound Taxi's enormous Indian horns, filling the streets with real-time samples based on its immediate surroundings.

    The Sound Taxi spent the last few days touring around London and collecting samples, before ending its run on Friday afternoon. Its collected tracks, however, will eventually be uploaded to Suzuki's site, and, as Ars Technica reports, the designer is also looking to use the Sound Taxi for an upcoming live performance.