Playtime: exploring the sonic materiality of urban atmospheres through playful object design

As we move through the city, our actions constantly and spontaneously create unexpected events and interactions with the environment and with each other, which results in a rich experience that invites us to explore and play (Stevens, 2007). While Melbourne’s public infrastructures are often designed with strict guidelines and usage (City of Melbourne, 2021), activities such as skating and parkour are examples of people discovering new ways to play and explore the city. This practice-based research takes advantage of sound and other senses to encourage playfulness between people and the urban environment. In particular, the focus is on the design of tactical objects that can be applied directly to existing urban infrastructure. The objects are designed to disclose and accentuate existing sounds associated with a site, rather than adding new ones. My practice in industrial design and making, paired with my interest in the sonic experience, allowed me to employ field observations and explorative prototyping as two main research methods. This project identifies a gap in public infrastructure design: a lack of consideration of emotive effects. This is caused by an exclusive focus on its functionalities. It responds to this gap by extending its possible effects through aural senses. The sonic design possibilities resulting from this are explored and culminate in a library of sounding objects, methods and mechanisms that are intended for adaptation into available public infrastructure designs. The outcome is to develop my professional practice towards the mastery of experience-oriented object design, with a touch of playfulness.