Listening In

LOCATION: Union Square, New York City
In this episode, we encounter a 19 year old fashionista tuned into C.E.X. (pronounced “sex”) and Bobbie Gentry’s “Chickasaw County Child” on the mix CD he dubs “Flux;” an 80 year old former jazz trombonist and musician’s union cardholder tuned to the US Airforce Big Band – aka, “The Airmen of Note;” and a girl from the Bronx tuned to a popular R&B song by Nick Cannon, sung from the perspective of a baby in the womb,
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This essay suggests a way of understanding emerging behaviors of mobile music listeners by positing two hypotheses: 1) that geolocation is weakening as a factor in determining personal identity and 2) that musical taste as a general rule is becoming more eclectic. These two tendencies set up the potential to better activate the role of mobile music listeners and the opportunity for designers to facilitate this active role.

Presented at the 2nd International Mobile Music Workshop, held at the 2005 “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.

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