The Fuzzy Logic Project – Photos: courtesy of Marta Santambrogio.

Was if the urban soundscape was an orchestrated moving symphony rather than a random mesh of unintended sound? The Fuzzy Logic project by young designer Marta Santambrogio is a speculative project that responds to noise pollution with music composition.

Marta Santambrogio plunged into the challenging entropy of Indian streets to turn local tuk-tuks into music-making vehicles able to compose the sound of traffic as a whole.

Traffic noise is now the inorganic combination of individually designed sounds. A recent European law states that new models of electric and hybrid vehicles will have to make a noise by 2019.

Exploiting the potential of current shifts towards electric transport, the Fuzzy Logic project presents an alternative: noise itself becomes the object of design, and traffic is turned into a musical experience. Future e-cars are approached as speakers on wheels.

With the help of local drivers and musicians, Marta Santambrogio adapted traditional Indian musical instruments and then integrated them into a system designed to be randomly harmonic.

The Fuzzy Logic project led to the creation of the Exhaustophone, a speaker for electric tuk-tuks that consists in a 1.5 m long steel horn attached to a tuk-tuk exhaust.

Marta Santambrogio says: “Indian music and traffic work basically the same. They are both based on improvisation, they have a quite precise set of rules that are intentionally ambiguous to allow interpretation and improvvisation”.

“The key  to of the project was not to compose a music piece for traffic. I wanted to design rules for vehicles, in a way which would then make musical sense when traffic moves together randomly.  Just like instruments improvising in a jam session”.