Abstract
This article presents the results of a study based on a group of participants’ interactions with an experimental sound installation at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK. The installation used audio augmented reality to attach virtual sound sources to a vintage radio receiver from the museum’s collection, with a view to understanding the potentials of this technology for promoting exploration and engagement within museums and galleries. We employ a practice-based design ethnography, including a thematic analysis of our participants’ interactions with spatialised interactive audio, and present an identified sequence of interactional phases. We discuss how audio augmented artefacts can communicate and engage visitors beyond their traditional confines of line-of-sight, and how visitors can be drawn to engage further, beyond the realm of their original encounter. Finally, we provide evidence of how contextualised and embodied interactions, along with authentic audio reproduction, evoked personal memories associated with our museum artefact, and how this can promote interest in the acquisition of declarative knowledge. Additionally, through the adoption of a functional and theoretical aura-based model, we present ways in which this could be achieved, and, overall, we demonstrate a material object’s potential role as an interface for engaging users with, and contextualising, immaterial digital audio archival content.
Highlights
The audio augmented reality (AAR) installation presented here, along with the subsequent study of its deployment, aims to investigate and access the potentials and challenges involved in utilising such technology as a means of promoting visitor exploration and engagement with physical museum and gallery-based artefacts, along with related digital audio archive material
Participants’ written feedback was prompted by the question How would you describe your experience with the augmented radio? Verbal feedback was captured on the video camera’s microphone, with participants being asked, if they were not initially forthcoming on their own accord, what they thought about the experience they had just undertaken
One participant commented on how the combination of the real object and the virtual audio triggered their imagination, much like listening to music being a catalyst for the mind’s eye, but suggesting that having a physical object in front of them which directly related to the content on their headphones in some way amplified this experience: It just brings the sound out more, so you’re kind of just looking at the object, imagining things, the object’s actual sounds but without touching it
Summary
The audio augmented reality (AAR) installation presented here, along with the subsequent study of its deployment, aims to investigate and access the potentials and challenges involved in utilising such technology as a means of promoting visitor exploration and engagement with physical museum and gallery-based artefacts, along with related digital audio archive material. The argument, in short, is that sonic exhibitions might help us to break from the truth effects of visual and textual storytelling and all of the asymmetrical power relations that they have been said to produce. Of note is the Wellcome Collection’s less obviously crowd-pleasing 2016 exhibition ‘This is a Voice’ which used installed sound, mainly via contemporary art commissions, to tell the scientific, medical and cultural story of the human voice. This trajectory has established sound as an interpretation tactic in museums. There remains a live question about how to approach sound itself as an object of display
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
