These interests in the soundscape and fantasizing AI led to my latest project, "Imaginary Soundscape". As I wrote, one can imagine scenes from a sound. Conversely, by taking a glance at a photo, we can imagine sounds we might hear if we were there. Can an AI system do the same? If so, what if we apply the method to images of Google Street View, so that we can walk around with the generated soundscape?

Google Street View is a great way to imagine you're somewhere else, walking the streets of a bustling foreign city or making your way through a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. Now, thanks to a project from Nao Tokui, it's become even more immersive. He's put together a feature called Imaginary Soundscapes that creates background noise based on what you're looking at in Google Street View. It's a soundtrack for your virtual walks that was first identified by the Tumblr user Prosthetic Knowledge. Imaginary Soundscapes works by using two different neural networks.