Alex and I have been continuing our ideas around sharing audio space. We’ve changed the system from being for two people, like we proposed before, to a system that is one to many or many to one.

Any one person can give another a stick shaped listening stick. When the gifted bites down on the stick, she can hear the auditory environment surround the gifter.

Any person can bring any number of sticks with them to listen to, collapsing the distance normally between them and the people they are listening to.

Because you need to bite down to listen you cannot speak at the same time. The microphone you wear around your neck does not allow true two way communication.

The sound transmitted is sent by means of bone induction, so the sound is not only entirely private, but the listener still can listen to their surroundings at full bandwidth, unlike what happens with one would wear headphones.

One thing we wanted to avoid was using collapsible aural space as some kind of crippled telephone or strange looking walkie talkie. This is because we are more interested in contextual sounds than in an actual telephone.