Space Replay floats hauntingly through spaces echoing its surroundings

Designers from London's Royal College of Art have created a haunting orb-like floating object that ominously drifts through public spaces recording and replaying delayed echoes of its surroundings.
The sphere contains a speaker and a battery-powered sensory device hacked by the designers to record and playback audio in near real-time.
The components are encased within a vacuum-formed plastic core and placed inside a latex balloon.
Designers Francessco Tacchini, Julinka Ebhardt and Will Yates-Johnson created the cone-shaped plastic centre to improve the sound quality resonating from the speaker, whilst protecting the surrounding latex outer-skin from sharp edges.
A measured amount of helium was added to the balloon, enabling Space Replay to reach its buoyancy point and hover.
The balloon travels through spaces according to the natural flow of air in the surrounding environment, which is altered as people move through each space.
"The sphere responds sonically to people and its surroundings," explained the designers. "By recording and replaying the ambient sounds it picks up, Space Replay produces an echo of human activity."