Concerto for public transport orchestra in four movements

The algorithms regularly receives data about the movement of public transport from a server in Latvia, which provides this data to several transportation services in several cities in Russia and the Baltic States, and interprets (sonificating) this data as a sounds.

The algorithms generates an array of tone frequencies within a equally tempered scale:

  • for the first part: from the small octave note D (146.8324 Hz) upwards in a quarter-tone scale (24 notes per octave);
  • for the second part: from the note A of the contra-octave (55.0000 Hz) upwards in semitone scale (7 notes per octave);
  • for the third part: from the note in A of the contra-octave (55.0000 Hz) upwards in an eighth-tone scale (48 notes per octave);
  • for the fourth part: from the B note of the first octave (493.8832 Hz) upwards in 300-tone scale (300 notes per octave);

In the following, the algorithm will map each of the tones to a velocity in km/h such that the higher the velocity, the higher the tone.

The first two parts calculate the average traffic speed and monitor its change. If the average traffic speed in the city increases, the distance between tones over time decreases (tones are played more often). In case the average traffic speed decreases, the distance between tones increases (tones are played less frequently).

In the third and fourth parts, the distance between tones is fixed.


Max Alyokhin
Born in 1994 in Krasnodar, Russia, living and working in Saint Petersburg.

Have higher technical education. Graduated from Krasnodar College of Electronic Device Engineering and the Academy of Marketing and Social Information Technologies with a specialty in “Computing Machines,
Complexes, Systems and Networks”.

Co-founder and active member of the Kiuss art-group. Main areas of work are street activities (street-art), neosuprematism and web development. Co-founder of the cultural center “The Mansion of Culture” (full name—Autonomous Non-Commercial Organization in the Sphere of Culture, Art and Creativity “Krasnodar Regional Art Research and Education Center “The Mansion of Culture”) and the gallery “The High of Culture”. Author of the
three-part essay “Instructions for Semiotics”. Developer of the web-application for psychogeographic research “Dérive”. Co-organizer of “Dérive” and “The Ark of Culture” festivals. Author of the musique concrète project “Digital fixation of audio processes”. Technical director and designer of the independent book publishing house “Asebeia”.