Open Song

Open Song is the world's first real-time user generated, geolocated song platform.

Inkahoots' interactive sound-based installation was commissioned for the Gold Coast's arts festival, Bleach*. Its inaugral staging was in the hinterland town of Mudgeeraba and was free to all 24/7.

Open Song allows participants to compose a song based on their chosen route through a space – they can also record and upload their own samples as they go – contributing to the collective composition of the song in real time. It uses the participant's web-connected device to reference geolocated nodes that automatically trigger random samples, building a unique sonic composition relative to their passage through the space.

Inkahoots collaborated with local primary school students in workshops to create sounds for a foundation track which was produced by Inkahoots and Brisbane hip hop group Tailor Made. Revered Australian songwriter Kev Carmody also contributed a library of samples recorded in an old shearing shed on his property on Queensland's Granite Belt. 

The work explores ideas of composing with chance based on the Dadaists découpé, and the cut-up technique’s later development by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. It combines these ideas with the Situationists’ notions of psychogeography and dérive – touring through urban landscapes directed by the feelings evoked by the surroundings, experiencing the “specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organised or not) on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” 

Open Song harnesses digital technologies to extend these principles towards collective and collaborative experiences.

Listen to an ABC radio interview about the project.

See more images of the student workshops.