Nagori – Photos That Sound

About

The photograph survives. The sound goes first. By next month you cannot recall what that day felt like. What is missing is probably not resolution. EmorinCam is a camera that keeps the sound from around the moment you pressed the shutter, together with a single still photo. Emorin comes from three Japanese words: emoi, when something moves you; nagori, what lingers after a thing is gone; and yoin, the resonance a sound leaves behind. FIVE SECONDS BEFORE While the camera screen is open, the last five seconds are held in this device's memory. Nothing has been written to a file yet. The screen says it is listening, for as long as it is. THE MOMENT You press the shutter. That is the only thing you press. There is no record button anywhere in the app. FIVE SECONDS AFTER The five seconds that follow close the recording. It is saved as one sound, next to one photograph. So what you keep is the laughter before anyone posed, the middle of a sentence, waves, rain, a train, a street, a festival, a dog. The air of the place itself. Pick a photo and then hit record, and what you get is a voice explaining the picture. The sound from before the shutter cannot be reached that way — by then it has already happened. AFTERWARDS Your library is a set of still photographs. Nothing becomes a video. The sound only rises when you touch one. They group by month, and you can mark favourites. You can write a short note on any photo. You can export a short video with the sound and send it as it is. Deleting a photo deletes its sound with it. English and Japanese. Dark mode, Dynamic Type and VoiceOver. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO Nothing is kept unless you take the photo. This is how it is built, not a promise we ask you to trust: the sound being held is never written to a file, so closing the camera without shooting ends it. It does not record in the background. It does not record outside the camera screen. Whenever it is listening, it says so on screen. No photo and no sound is sent to any server. There is no account. Everything ends on this device. FREE, AND PRO The free app keeps fifteen sound photos. Capturing, keeping, looking back, listening and sharing are all free, and sharing exports a square video. Pro is a one-time purchase. It removes the limit on how many you can keep, adds the vertical format and the slow push to shared videos, and removes the small name from the corner. Reaching the limit never takes anything away. Everything already saved stays on your device and keeps playing, with or without Pro. The limit applies only to saving something new, and deleting a photo gives the slot back. The sound of a place includes the voices of the people in it. Think of them before you capture, and before you share.