A Zen Garden interface for the interactive control of sonic ambiences in smart environment

In this paper we introduce SoZen, a novel interface for parameterizing aspects of ambient soundscapes including ambient music and peripheral sonifications using a Zen Garden. The SoZen system is both a stylish and aesthetic artifact in daily living environments and a computer-vision-based tangible and malleable representation for sound features. Due to the immediate correspondence between the arrangement of stones and the shape of sand with sonic features it also becomes a persistent visualization of the current sonic ambience. Thus it offers a conceptually different and `calm´ way of reviewing and specifying sounds. The paper focuses on the conceptual ideas and showcases our current system. We demonstrate some initial ambiences and conclude with current ideas on how to embed and evaluate SoZen in the context of a smart apartment environment.