The Audio Compounder is a website working with sounds. Through the AC, sound fragments are collected, categorized and brought into new "sense connections". The result is an archive, a forum of online radio plays made of public sound material. AC functions as a transformer of contexts of sense; identity fragments are gathered, indications of interactions, and conceptual spaces hidden in sounds and AC provides the conditions for new extension of meaning to be formed of this material.
AC consists of three elements: AC-Collector, AC-Generator, AC-Player.

AC Collector: The AC Collector is a public collection space, a pool for sound particles. The public has the possibility of feeding short sounds (max.length 5 sec) in mp3-format via internet into the AC pool. These sound particles can be dialog items, sounds describing an individual, sounds defining an interaction, or atmospheric sounds characterizing localities or tendencies. Each of these sound items is categorized by the person who sends it into the pool. For example, a dialog item can be assigned to categories of "aggressive", "factual", or "friendly". In this way, the structured storage of possible sense contexts, tendencies and identities - a sphere of latent meanings - emerges through a collective effort.

AC Generator: With the AC Generator, the public now has the ability to get access to this online sound storage. The individual sound particles can be arranged on a time axis as micro radio plays. With the help of the AC, latent characters, situations and tendencies are contextualized and re-contextualized – in a simultaneously acoustic and telematic space – into new extension of meaning. In addition, the AC Generator offers different online search and editing functions. The results of this transformation automatically become elements of an online audio file which can be visited and used with the AC Player.

AC Player: A set of order and search functions permits selective access to the various micro radio plays collected as audio files. With the AC Player, thematically weighted "programs" can also be assembled.

Technical realization by adm™ Graz und Wien 2002
Project team: Orhan Kipcak, Kaya Kipcak, Sebastian Hanig, Harald Gölles

Orhan Kipcak
born 1957 in Istanbul, lives and works in Graz; 1998 launch of an agency for media design (adm™); various projects in the field of media art/media design; virtual exhibition/digital exhibition for museums, festivals, institutions and companies; EU-research projects; projects for telematic study; since 1992 fellow lecturer at the TU Graz and Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna; since 2001 professor for media design at the FH-Joanneum, Graz; see for projects: www.adm.at