Mur mur speaker blends soundscapes with a living world

If you’re bored of listening to the same predictable playlist over and over, a portable speaker called mur mur offers an unusual alternative: it doesn’t just play pre-recorded music, but creates an ever-changing soundscape.

Created by OIO and Mattering studios, mur mur is described as “a speaker with a world inside.” The creators took this idea quite literally: if you look through the eyepiece on top of the device, you’ll see a circular display showing a simulated ecosystem with its own weather, temperature, and inhabitants that interact with each other.

A joking message at the bottom of the speaker says, “Do not shake too hard, living agents are inside.” And although there is nothing inside but electronics, the visual digital environment does make you feel like you are listening in on someone else’s little world.

Mur mur has a funky design, oversized knobs and buttons, and comes in three colors representing three different environments: orange-and-white Block, green Plot, and blue Pond. All of them have 3D-printed shells.

Block represents a neighborhood in a miniature city with rush-hour traffic, street musicians, pigeons, people walking on the sidewalks, and delivery robots. Plot takes you to a forest, where you can hear birds, insects, hikers, and their footsteps over dry leaves. Pond is a water ecosystem with fish, ducks, frogs, and boats passing by.

The weather also affects what happens inside those worlds: when rain starts, for example, people leave the streets, and the sounds that you hear change too. And the best part, according to the creators, is that you never know what is going to happen next.

Instead of using prompts to tell the AI exactly what to create, the device combines multiple digital patterns and sounds based on how its virtual agents move and interact with each other and their environment. Those so-called agents represent certain creatures or objects, each following its own rhythms and rules. Their interactions happen over a musical layer, and all together, they get translated into sounds that change as the life in the virtual world goes on. That is how infinite soundscapes are generated.

There is a quite entertaining digital representation of how those environments work available on the mur mur website.

With the usual AI-generated music experience, you request whatever you like and get it instantly. And that’s what makes mur mur different: you don’t get to choose the next sound, or ask it to play a certain prompt. Actually, you don’t really have control over anything except turning the device on and off. Mur mur mixes sounds in a new way every time – turn it on and see what happens.

The creators have also experimented with different device sizes: some versions are designed to sit on a desk, and some are small enough to attach to a keychain. The device can also connect to external audio equipment.

For now, mur mur is still a prototype, and its creators are looking for collaborators to help develop the project further and potentially bring it to market.

Source: mur mur