Light
Warm light
Selected work · Soundscape and Lighting in Retail

Same store.Another light.Another tempo.

For a master's dissertation at UCL in London, AERA composed the soundtracks for a real in-store experiment and built the listening station that shows the sound from the inside.

Study
A 2×2 pilot in a working store: warm or cool light × slow or fast music
AERA
Soundtracks, sound method and landing page
Language
English · international project
01 · The design

Two variables,
four conditions.

Light and tempo change; the store, the products and the architecture stay. Pick a condition: the whole page starts pulsing at its tempo.

Slow music · 68 BPMFast music · 118 BPM Warm light Cool light
02 · The same music

Only the pulse
changes.

If the two tracks were different songs, genre would become a second variable. So they are the same sonic material: close in harmony, timbre and density, at another tempo.

Slow · 68 BPM · 30 s excerptReal waveform
Spectrogram of the 68 BPM excerpt.
Fast · 118 BPM · 30 s excerptSpectrogram computed from the audio
Spectrogram of the 118 BPM excerpt.
Three tracks per tempoSmall variations in melody and arrangement, so the repetition never becomes obvious
No peaks, no dropsStable dynamics, because the store's sound level was being measured
No vocalsInstrumental, so lyrics don't become another variable
03 · Measure so nothing changes

The ear approves.
The analysis confirms.

Each version was compared with the anchor track through audio analysis, to make sure only the tempo changed. And the slow tempo was brought close to the classic retail atmospherics literature.

Tempobeat detection
Harmonychroma similarity
TimbreMFCC distance
Brightnessspectral centroid

The bars show what was checked, not results of the study.

GenerationEditing and mixOutput SunoAbleton Live2 mixes Big hall Room Slap Echo 68 BPM · ~86 min 118 BPM · ~86 min Continuous loop, no seam
04 · The listening station

A landing page
that shows the sound.

Live FFT, spectrogram, waveform and loudness of the full tracks, plus a scene with the four conditions. In English, for the examiners and collaborators.

AstroWeb Audio · FFTLUFS · LU · dBTPReduced motion
The landing page opening, with the study's title over a photo of the store.
The conditions scene: the shelf photo changes light and plays a 30-second excerpt.
05 · In the field

A real store,
not a lab.

Light, sound and space recorded in the store, between set-up and measurements.

The store entrance, with The Hanger sign.
The Hanger
Wide view of the store.
The space
Light in transition · silent film
Lux meter and sound level meter in hand, inside the store.
Light and sound, measured
A store aisle with clothing racks.
Circulation
Detail of the displays.
Displays
Another view of the store.
Back of the store