Storytelling animals II

Guides for Universeum in Gothenburg

Universeum is a vibrant attraction that focuses on engaging kids with the natural world. The Forum for Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with Sennheiser, developed audio guides for Universeum that present four different animals: wolf, beaver, adder and salmon - all of which have increasingly smaller habitats because of influences of mankind. These animals follow the path of The Water’s Way exhibit, giving a great overview to each animal’s habitat.

How they work

In the audio guides, the child listens to one of the animals narrate about conditions governing its life in the Swedish landscape. Every audio guide consists of a headset and a bracelet decorated in a theme associated with one of the animals.

The four audio guides have separate scripts read out by different actors and the narratives pause at different stations in The Water’s Way area. The wolf’s audio guide is the longest and the most multimodal of the four and stops at the most stations (3). It encourages the child to actively interact with the exhibit’s environment and has environmental sounds, sound effects and dramatised music. The beaver’s audio guide has no interaction, but has environmental sounds that enhance the feeling of being out in nature. The salmon and adder are both without interaction and sound effects – they consist only of an actor’s storytelling voice. These disparities allowed us to study how increased levels of interaction and auditory dramatisation affect children’s experience of the environment and stories of the animals.

The chosen technical solution is called Guideport and has been developed by Sennheiser. The headband of each guide contains a receiver and a set of headphones. Eleven small identifiers, located throughout the venue at The Water’s Way, triggers the receivers to play the appropriate files when the child wearing the receiver enters a certain predefined area. The next audio track comes on as soon as the child leaves the area and enters a different zone. This means that the child could do things at her own pace.