The Challenge

Sound Development is a hub following a family tradition of supporting independent culture by providing facilities and aid in an environment that allows artists to realise projects freed from boundaries of classical culture institutions.

Sound Development wanted their presence on the web to be a simple, easy-to-use and clearly structured archive where users could access their running projects. Further, the website should function as a documentation platform for projects and seek to interlink these.

The aim was to create a visually simple interface, since Sound Development as the "mothership" wished to stay in the background. The attention of the visitors should instead be attracted to the many vibrant projects. At the same time Sound Development wanted to transcend the feeling of how Sound Development works and acts in order to give users a glance of their highly personal way of realising projects with artists.

Our Solution

In collaboration with the designer Alain Leclerc von Bonin we came up with the solution of combining two websites in one: The simple XHTML and AJAX driven overlay works as the basic interface of the information-based project archive. In the background there is a fullscreen Flash media player acting as the emotional layer that gives users an insight into Sound Development in a more multimedial and personal manner.

The information layer and media player are linked together and every information channel on the website has its corresponding channel that plays the related media modules. The user can either browse the website in a classical way or by zapping through the channels of the mediaplayer.