Background Party: app idea

 A few days ago I was sitting in my room thinking about life. It was dead silent. As I was clicking through pictures on my computer, I heard music blasting outside my apartment building on a Monday night. This wasn’t unusual. It was because of the window that had broken a couple of weeks earlier that I could hear everything going on in the wild. Coincidentally, I was looking at a picture that reminded me of the particular music playing in the background. So, I asked myself, wouldn’t it be cool to have an app that lets a user attach a short audio track that plays along an image?

It’s interesting how images and music play an important role in revitalizing memories. Images project a specific memory and music triggers an emotional response. I want to bring these two tools together to make the idea of a memory even more powerful to recall. A lot of people listen to music and take images to capture a specific moment. Music is an essential part of most of our lives and images are a graphical representation of our past. These two tools by them self seem to be incomplete. By joining them I believe we can make memories more exciting by simultaneously triggering emotions and visuals in our brain. 

Some people might question the use of video instead.  Videos have been in use for a long time but are still not as powerful in recalling memories when compared to images or music. This is because images let an observer use their imagination to create their own memory.  The observer is allowed to create a thought from their own perspective and use whatever clues they can get to rebuild a moment. Videos tend to force a user to accept a memory as it is and does not allow room for any speculation.

After experimenting with a few pictures and audio clips, I discovered that the blend turned out to be more interesting than I had initially thought. The most interesting aspect about the picture and audio experience was my personal attachment with the particular song playing along. I also came to the conclusion that an observer would spend more time looking at a picture than normal. 
      
  Basically, I think memories can be made more exciting by adding a layer of audio on top of a picture. This concept has a lot of potential as an application on smart phones. A user would be able to upload pictures and attach a 5-9 second audio clip from an online music library. The pictures can seamlessly be posted on the internet via twitter or facebook. Users can share an audio track for a picture and vote on the best audio that replicates the image. The audio with the most up votes would automatically play when a user looks at an image. 

I’ve put together a few examples that consist of different pictures and audios. Let me know what you think!

                                                            Seven seconds Starlight-Muse

6 seconds boom boom pow

6 seconds don't stop the party

7 seconds she_doesn't_listen

There is a picture app hackathon coming up in New York on the 21^st. It’s sponsored by NASDAQ and the winners’ app gets displayed at time square. Who’s in(hackers and designers only)?

Read more about it over here:
http://blog.aviary.com/were-organizing-the-biggest-photo-hackathon-youve-ever-seen/