Transportable Environments and Music Technology

The iPod (courtesy of Apple Computer) is a prime example of a transportable environment. These environments, typically include portable buildings that are assembled, used, and disassembled, but also include technological gadgets that travel with us. Now days, the most common pocket gadget in the world is the iPod. Since its debut in October of 2001, two iPod’s are sold every minute, and by 2007, Apple announced that the 100 millionth iPod was sold. Why is it that popular? The answer is simple, it took advantage of a changing technology, analog to digital. According to Prasad Boradkar “digital circuitry has replaced electromechanical machinery, integrated chips and printed circuit boards have triumphed over motors and pulleys, and moving electrons have deposed moving components. The result has been a explosion in the number of small, digital gadgets like laptop computers, personal digital assistants, mobile telephones, MP3 players, and video games” (1). The iPod also used a new music file format (a new file language) called the MP3 file. This file is genius in design, where it can be stored on anything containing a hard drive, modified on various music softwares, copied (burnt) onto another devices, and take up a very small amount of space, while never being damaged, seen, or touched, only heard. The iPod has thus led a movement of free music communication without wires or plug-ins, making the previous technology of CD players, which were bulky and required a music mechanism (CDs) in order to be heard, an instant thing of the past. It has become “ a cultural commodity that has changed how music is shared, transported, distributed, stored, and consumed” (2).
As in many of my previous research analyses', the aural world we live in is a major factor of our perception of time and space. As the iPod gives us an individual choice to what is heard, the environmental perception changes. Some might argue that the iPod is an environment itself, both real in time and space, and virtual in content with the acoustical qualities. In Michael Bull’s essay “To each Their Own Bubble”, Bull writes about individual space created by individual stereo users is one that is “non-spatialized conceptual space” (Bull 284) that is ephemeral in nature, rather than geographical.

A building must keep up with this technology both in content and concept.

For more insight into the technologies of music, check out these videos from youtube: