Binaudios is a device that enables the user to ‘listen’ to the sounds of the city.

Thinking Digital Arts paired artist Dominic Wilcox and creative technologist James Rutherford together to collaborate on a new commission responding to the Thinking Digital Conference’s context in the music performance centre, Sage Gateshead, located in the cultural quayside quarter of NewcastleGateshead.

Taking tourist binoculars as inspiration, the Binaudios can be pointed at over 40 different locations, seen out of the Sage Gateshead windows. Turn the giant listening cones toward the football stadium to hear the crowd chanting or to the Tyne Bridge to hear King George V’s speech when he opened the bridge in 1928. Point it toward the park to listen to sounds such as skateboarders and local tennis players.

As the Binaudios are rotated the stereo sounds move from one ear to the other creating a real feeling of listening to the city across the river.