Translated text spoken by Michael during the presentation of Mobilodrom in the centre of the city of Utrecht:

“For all those people who don’t know what this is about, let me explain a little. We are trying to translate the environment of Utrecht into music. And up here on this rack, we have a number of sensors that are going to translate the environment.

The little windmill here measures the air pressure in Utrecht, those two blue boxes over there measure the movements around the car, and the silver box next to them measures the temperature, and the other silver box next to that one measures the light currently present in Utrecht.

In front we have a microphone. Through the microphone, the hardness around us is measured, as well as the pitch around us.

This means that if we start driving here now, the city of Utrecht will be translated into music. This piece is about the environment. And as you can see in the program, I’ve chosen two types of sound material for this piece: the sound of whales and the sound of bells.

Whales as a symbol of our time, showing that our environment is not being properly handled by our society. And the bell as a symbol of history. For example during the Middle Ages and Renaissance the bell served as a signal instrument for a village. When there was a storm, you would hear the bell, and the community was warned that there could be a problem.

As you can also see in the program, there is an organization mentioned — namely Greenpeace. And I’m really glad that Greenpeace took part in this piece, because Greenpeace is one of the few organizations actively working to put an end to the death of whales and the annual killing of 150,000 seals.

Furthermore, Greenpeace also stands against the dumping of radioactive waste into the sea, which has been happening over the past 25 years. And now, we can’t even be sure whether the fish we eat contains radioactive waste or not.

Alright, to show you that our sensors are working, we’ve programmed a small special software. First, we’ll demonstrate what the pitch detector does. The input is a tone scale, and when I now produce a high-pitched tone in the microphone, that scale will be played two octaves higher.

And if I now produce a low tone into the microphone, the scale will be played two or three octaves lower. This means that when we’re driving and you suddenly hear very high tones, it has something to do with the high-pitched sounds surrounding the car.

You’ll notice that when a very high tone enters the microphone, the sound suddenly becomes very high. If no sound comes in, it stays exactly at the same pitch.

Now I’ll try a very low tone scale. (Sounds) You just heard it again — it wasn’t very high, but suddenly the octave shifted one octave higher. Fantastic.

Alright, now we’ll demonstrate the loudness detector. (Sounds) As you can see, when I speak now, the pitch doesn’t change. (Sounds)
This is a very simple example showing that the loudness of the sound around the car is being measured.
When very irregular pauses appear, it means, for example, that when a bus suddenly drives by, the entire loudness of the composition changes because of that.

Alright, we’re going to start driving again now. Maybe you feel like coming along? You’re very welcome, otherwise, good bye.”