Jessica Thompson receives an Early Researcher Award from the provincial government

Congratulation to Fine Arts Professor Jessica Thompson whose work has been recognized with an Early Researcher Award from the provincial government.  The program gives funding of $140,000 to new researchers to build a research team.  Jessica is one of fifteen University of Waterloo researchers to receive provincial grants to advance the Ontario's knowledge-based economy.

Jessica's project, Borderline, is a research-creation project that uses the sonification of algorithmic data to create new understandings of place. Algorithms have inextricably changed urban experience, identifying patterns in data capable of creating new economies, but also, sometimes, reinforcing social and economic disparities. Drawing from her prior research, Borderline will locate uneven geographies in four of Ontario’s largest urban centres, and will make these areas audible through data-triggered musical systems embedded in mobile and wearable technologies. Audiences will be able to listen ‘in place’, discovering invisible borders in their communities that affect social and economic mobility.

Soundwalk with beta version of Borderline, Struer, Denmark. Participants tagged sounds in the environment to generate locative soundscapes using the app, and used card sorting to visualize the sounds they were listening to.