YomeciLand: Found Sound as Play

YomeciLand: Found Sound as Play presents preliminary research into a location-based mobile game that uses environmental sound as its core mechanic. Developed by Matthew Riley and Uyen Ngoc Phuong Nguyen at RMIT University, the project combines elements of a soundwalk, a pervasive game, and an artificial world. Players walk urban streets and laneways in Melbourne, recording found sounds on their phones, which then feed a real-time 3D virtual ecosystem populated by artificial creatures. The paper's central argument is that engaging attentively with everyday urban sound can reshape how players relate to their location, and that sound deserves greater attention in pervasive game design, an area where its role has been comparatively underexplored.

The design evolved across two iterations. The first prototype, playtested in Melbourne, sorted creatures into predators and prey based on Schafer's distinction between high- and low-fidelity sounds, producing simple gameplay in which players quickly learned to seek out particular sounds. The current iteration replaces this hierarchy with a flatter, relational model built on symbiotic interactions, in which players combine disparate environmental sounds into hybrid creatures. The authors also report that the current design employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to recognise environmental sounds, opening new avenues for the project.

The work is positioned within a wider practice of playful sound art, including Electroplankton, A Folded Path, KlingKlangKlong, and Phantom Synchron, and draws on theories of pervasive games and multimodal interaction. The evidence presented is qualitative and drawn from prototype playtesting in one city, with no reported participant numbers or formal user study. The authors identify a more extensive player study as the next stage of the inquiry.