Francesco Tacchini has created an eerie, fascinating, floating globe that records and plays back the ambient sound in an environment. The Royal College of Art explains:
The sphere responds sonically to people and its surroundings by means of a battery-powered Arduino, an Adafruit Wave Shield hacked to record and playback audio on-the-fly and a small speaker. These were inserted into a latex balloon after being vacuum formed in plastic in the shape of a cone — in order to enhance the sound coming from the speaker and protect the balloon from the wires and PCB edges. A measured amount of helium was added to it in order to be able to lift its content and hover, reaching a neutral buoyant condition.
Watch Space Relay in action; my favorite location is the public transportation tunnel. I would love to encounter something like this on my day to day adventures.
Space Replay from RCA IED
via Royal College of Art where you can also see the technology that makes it work!