While in Madrid on the Puerta del Sol, a visitor carefully listens and relives the events of spring. Soon reality overtakes imagination. Throughout the development of Clamor (Clameurs), the application’s founders have asserted its cultural and social impact. Record or listen to sounds on the move. Relive moments in history, share feelings about a situation or recommend places of interest to the community, all via smartphone.
“Clamor can transform a country into a broadcast medium,” says Fabrice Benoit, one of the founders of Clamor. The user becomes a creator of sound art, standing on the corner of a crowded street, lost in a concert’s ambience or soothed by muffled murmurs inside a church. The application operates like similar programs and its simplicity will hopefully encourage users to lay a track at nearly every corner. Upon launching Clamors on a smartphone, the user is immediately geolocated and can record sound with a simple touch. Once registered, the “sound capsule” will be added to the common database. The next pedestrian to pass the same location can access the recorded sound. Although users might be tempted to browse sound bites while relaxing on the couch, the geolocation feature of clamor necessitates that users be in “close proximity” to where the sound was recorded.
While Clamor’s daily recreational uses appeal to citydwellers that want to “recommend points of interest, play around with friends, create thematic tours through the city, call a community to a public debate,” these possibilities are also attracting artists. The “Clamor Gallery (galerie Clamours)” invited street artists, poets, slam poets, and musicians to enrich the sonic landscape, reclaim the city and consider it a broadcast medium.”
A location based advertising agency
Five partners for one application; the ambition of Clamor’s creators is boundless. In fact, “we are positioning ourselves as a location-based advertising agency,” explains Fabrice Benoit, addressing both private and public structures that wish to think outside the box of typical communication tools. “We can position scripted communications campaigns as part of an album or movie promotion,” and yet also create sonic journeys through art biennials. Urbanites could thus relive an ephemeral event that they were unable to physically attend by plunging into its soundscape.
Launched on April 1, the application available for free at the AppStore has convinced 560 budding composers thus far. Its founders had their moment of glory at a Mobile Monday in Paris dedicated to the most innovative applications (read the article ParisApps, the super application). If the adventure seems perilous, “there are many tracks of monetization that would come from related services,” states the entrepreneur cautiously. At Clamor’s offices, the noise of popping champagne corks has not yet been recorded.
To know more, please contact us at the following address contact@innovcity.com
Translated by Genny Cortinovis
Related content : application, smartphone, sound
