Roaring Tiger

The Caldera Sun-Times recently ran an art competition. The competition’s grand prize (one of freddie’s amazing Origami Tiger hoverbikes) was awarded to Kangaroo, seen here with the animal suitably caged.

What you can’t see here (and the reason I’ve placed this item in the Techniques category) is that as you approach this tiger, it makes a most un-There-like roaring sound that has astonished many an onlooker and not a few passing hoverboat passengers.

The clue to this is the radio you can just see hidden behind Kangaroo’s chair: it is tuned to a custom Shoutcast channel sourced from his home computer, broadcasting a loop of various “roaring tiger” sounds. Anyone approaching the cage will hear this as long as they have made the small one-time purchase of the music pack or transitioned from the original There beta program.

Of course, pulling off something like this requires a fair degree of technical sophistication, but I can’t help feeling that this technique might be used in a lot of places to give custom ambient sounds to a location or even just provide a public address system for events.