It’s_going_to_rain
Parked cars that hear rain coming and tell the people walking past.
Sound is the right medium here not because it is novel but because it is honest: it is the actual sound of rain, captured and passed along.
The message and the medium are the same thing.
Nothing is simulated or translated into a screen notification.
The weather speaks in its own voice, borrowed briefly by the fleet.
What could a parked connected car know about the city around it, and what would it do with that knowledge on behalf of the people nearby?
Vehicles spend majority of their lifetime stationary, do not participate in their environment in a visible and dynamic way.
But right now, vehicle emits sounds to its environment as form of warning, alarm or as an individual entertainment.
The sound of vehicles is not connected.
A car parked on the street has sensors. It can feel rain. It can hear it. It can tell other cars near by, before it’s going to rain.
It's Going to Rain activates that capacity on behalf of the people walking past.
Parked connected vehicles detect changes in weather — rain approaching, wind shifting direction.
They record a short sample of what rain sounds like on their own body: the specific percussion of drops on steel and glass. That sound is relayed, quietly, through the audio systems of other vehicles parked in the direction the rain is traveling. As you walk down the block, you hear it: a brief, low, ambient sound of rain, coming from the cars around you.