Sonic Imagination – Speculative Auditory Environments in Public Space

Abstract

The presentation shall give an overview of our recent artistic media research project ›Sonic Imagination‹, carried out in Basel at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW).

The project aimed to investigate the idea that binaural audio in augmented environments is particularly suitable for triggering and directing imaginations within human inner perception. Our assumption was that the binaural listening to imaginary entities at the place of recording (so to speak ‘in-situ’) enhances the imagination in a special way, since sound as a non-visual medium favours the creation of images in human inner perception. We therefore worked with a specific site that we regarded as our laboratory, the Freilager Platz in Basel, forming a part of the campus of FHNW.

We developed and juxtaposed two separate scenarios for our aesthetic research. Firstly, in the context of our interest in simulation techniques for participatory urbanism, we sonically reenacted the historic ›I Have A Dream‹ speech by Martin Luther King on the campus. We restored the archived recordings of King’s speech and designed an audio bed that offers the impression that the famous speech contra-factually is taking place on our campus in the here and now of the listeners. Secondly, we reconstructed the activity of the Israeli ›Iron Dome‹ missile interception system during the 2021 conflict with Gaza based on a YouTube video uploaded by ‘The Telegraph’ (of course without foreseeing the raised attention the Iron Dome would gain recently in Europe due to the war in the Ukraine).

The presentation will focus on the technical realisation of the scenarios as reactive mobile applications but will also give some insights that were gained from their qualitative evaluation.

›Sonic Imagination‹ has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).