Vodafone Soundmapping

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Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály started off on their first music collection trip in 1905 in Hungary.
They mapped the folk music of cultural landscapes and communities. In the 21st century, we had a much easier task on our hands, involving the public throughout the country in the process. Each city - even your city - has characteristic sounds: from the sounds of bells to the low buzz of residential estates or the noises coming from the club on the corner.

We called upon Vodafone's country-wide 3G coverage for help.

In the campaign, we asked enthusiastic young people to record sounds they found interesting or typical with their mobiles and send them to Yonderboi,

who composed a piece using these sounds.
He travelled throughout the country himself, searching for unique sounds.

Take a look at the TV advertising created to support the campaign,

before we carry on with the details.

First, we converted approximately 600 sound samples, which arrived to the campaign's microsite in exotic Android and iOS file formats to mp3 at backend and stored them.

Yonderboi also took part in the work of collecting sound samples, bloggers followed his journey and video materials documenting it proved successful on YouTube.

The series continues:

Launch, Glass factory, Lake Balaton, Nursery school

Brian Eno's classic Windows 95 Startup sound visualization

Realtime Sound Spectrum Visualisation

Depending on volume, we selected a color, an intensity and with polar coordinates, we destorted this into a round-shaped visual. This unique sound visualisation was then drawn onto Hungary's map in 3D.
With this visualization, we were also symbolizing the country's 3G coverage. Symbol sizes were adjusted in accordance with population density. The first sound player also sent a png spectrum to backend.
This image could be reused later on as a cache.

We continuously broadcasted about the current stage of the sound mapping project on the microsite and in a Facebook feed. After the appearance of the TV ad, lots of people instantly fell in love with the project and couldn't wait to hear the final track.

One month later, we invited those sending sound samples for the project to a small ruin church in the countryside and we introduced the piece at an exclusive party.

This was followed by Yonderboi's live act, which was streamed on Ustream in real time.

Photo by Attila Nagy

Finally, we would like to thank this huge crowd of awesome people,
without whom this complex campaign could not have been born.

Music: Laszlo 'Yonderboi' Fogarasi

Digital Agency: Mito
Art Director: Peter 'rozmy' Polgar
Actionscript Coder: Andras Wetzel
Graphic Designer: Levente Bezzegh
Creative Director: Balázs Pőcze
Copywriter: Gergely Marosi
Frontend Developer: Andras Matzon, Levente Király
Backend programmer: Csaba Nemecsko
Technical Project Manager: Szabolcs Bobor

Online documentary: Umbrella
Director: Luka Kostil
Producer: Zoltan Hidvegi, Miklos Kazmer
Line Producer: Nikoletta Fehér
D.O.P: Attila Dobos
Editor: Daniel Szabó
Postproduction: Umbrella

TVC Agency: TeamRed
Copywriter: Anabela Vaskova
Art Director: Viktor Uhrin
Creative Director: Zoltán Istvánffy
Director: Danila Kostil
D.O.P.: Gabor Garai
Editor: David Jancso
Colorist: Adam Vandor
Stylist: Heni Kiss
Make-up: Natasha Kovalik
Hair: Krisztian Berki
Production manager: Eszter Fixek
Production: Movie Bar

Event agency: UP Advertising
Jácint Goneth
Kinga Sipeki
Simon Szabó

Broadcast Programming: Proud