Mendzapp — FoundBite

The idea behind FoundBite is to explore the world through sound. There are several photo sharing apps and services like Instagram and video sharing apps like YouTube, however I noticed there were none primarily focused towards sound – not music but the sounds we hear around us when we are out and about. Sound can be incredibly immersive and I hoped to portray that through this app.

When recording a sound you take a series of 5 photos of the scene you are in, giving people you share it with some visual references of what’s going on – these photos can be taken at any given interval so you can be free to walk around a whole area recording what you see and hear. The recording will then stop after the fifth photo. The recording and the photos are then geo-tagged.

You might say well why not use video? My personal opinion is that video on mobile devices can often have a poor quality picture or lots of shaking and there is no really emphasis on sound. Recording and taking pictures periodically allows you to walk around an area (for example a carnival) not worrying about how much your phone is shaking and you just need to pause momentarily to take a high quality still picture – yet you’re picking up lots of vibrant sounds all the time. I feel also that using still pictures and sound also allows you to use your imagination a bit to visualise a scene.

FoundBite will potentially allow users to share these recordings and captures with other people and they can access the “foundbite” and view when and where it was taken - really becoming immersed and interested in that place. It could also potentially allow people sitting on their sofa at home in Slough to hear the whir of hundreds of bicycles racing past on the streets of Bangkok or the thundering of the bulls on the streets of Pamplona all from their phone.

Apologies for any mistakes and the hastily recorded video – knew I shouldn’t have left it so late to submit this!

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