Listening in Museums   Author: Jøran Rudi institution and affilation: NOTAM

Abstract:

The article describes how a more comprehensive use of sound can augment mediation of artistic and cultural content.  Most experience of composed or contructed sound is currently mediated by technology, not directly experienced at the source.  The discussion on use of sound will need to include discussion of electro acoustics – sound mediated by electronic technological means – and electro acoustic methods. In order to make informed decisions on how to implement sound as integral elements in mediation methods, mediators need to draw on the fields of sound, acoustics and psychoacoustics.  Construction of meaning can be greatly facilitated by developing mediation methods where psychoacoustics and soundscape thinking are integrated, in order to draw on the enormous importance the human auditory system has for spatial orientation, localization and awareness of context. The use of sound can facilitate interpretation - through interaction with objects, virtual or physicalpeople, or more passively by movement tracking and different strategies for making use of sensor data placed in exhibition spaces.  The experiences can be different for each individual, and the technological development allows for an (almost) transparent implementation.

Paper:

 

Current use of music technology for mediation purposes in museums and exhibitions of cultural history is often limited to playing back spoken narrative.  The texts are often recorded and produced in order to be presented alone, without any disturbing elements.  These text-based presentations rely only on language as a set of symbols, and do not make use of the ability of our auditory system to distinguish and keep track of complex audible information, as it is found in for example in music or in the environment.  Audible contextualization will provide depth to any interpretation of objects. How can museum curators and educators involve the visitors' auditory systems more efficiently in the interpretation and assignment of meaning in museum contexts?

Consider the following detailed description of a Stockholm urban environment from 1879, written by August Strindberg, and how he sets the tone for his drama.  It is not easy to imagine how the soundscape he describes in The Red Room (1967) can leave any listener untouched.

Far below him rose the clamour of the newly awakened town; down in the the harbour the steam cranes whirred, the bars rattled in the iron-weighing machine, the lock-keepers' whistle shrilled, the steamers at the quayside steamed; the Kungsback omnibuses rattled over the cobblestones; hue and cry in the fishmarket, sails and flags fluttering in the water, screams of seagulls, bugle-calls Skeppsholm, military commands from Sodermalmstorg. Workmen in wooden shoes clattered down Glasbruksgatan, and all this gave an impression of life and movement.

 

Understanding sound

A more comprehensive use of sound can augment mediation of artistic and cultural content.  Most experiences of constructed and composed sound are currently mediated by technology, not directly experienced at the source.  The discussion on use of sound will need to include discussion of sound mediated by electronic technological means – electroacoustic techniques and methods.

In order to make informed decisions on how to implement sound as integral elements in mediation methods, mediators need to draw on the fields of acoustics, psychoacoustics and signal processing.  Construction of meaning can be greatly facilitated by developing mediation methods where psychoacoustics and soundscape thinking, as discussed in [1], are integrated, in order to draw on the importance the human auditory system has for spatial orientation, localization and awareness of context. 

The use of sound can facilitate interpretation - through interaction with virtual or objects, or more passively by movement tracking and different strategies for making use of sensor data placed in exhibition spaces.  The experiences can be different for each individual, and the technological development allows for (almost) transparent implementation.

 

Hearing, acoustics and psychoacoustics

Hearing is always on, keeping track of what is going on in our surroundings.  Signals are sorted in the hearing system, and strong, abrupt changes in our environment are given priority in our processing of audible data, as is unfamiliar sounds that deviate from the familiar soundscape.  These, and other issues, are discussed in [2].

Our hearing provides us with information on the state of, and changes in, our context, and gives us feedback on our relative location, actions and results of our actions.  The auditory system, discussed in [3], is the most complex mechanical construction in the human body, with millions of moving parts, and it works in conjunction with psychological perception mechanisms in order to separate more salient from less important events.  The hearing system is capable of distinguishing between subtle differences in spectra, amplitude and location all around us, and through spectral pattern matching we make continuous use of our huge number of references for categorization of sounds - for the most part without thinking about it.  In broad terms, we just know what we hear, and where it is coming from.

Acoustics and psychoacoustics form the framework for our auditory experiences, and both fields are well described in the literature.  Acoustics, discussed in [4], describe the physical behaviour of sound, while psychoacoustics, discussed in [5], describe the human processes that regulate and influence our perception, appreciation and prioritizing of signals from the acoustic world.  This knowledge has aided the development of numerous electroacoustic techniques, where synthesis and signal processing has been applied to create new knowledge, as for example in the fields of artificial sounds and acoustics.

 

Music technology

Modern music technology deals with the creation and recording of sound, the processing and composition/construction of sound and music, the production of content, and the distribution and diffusion of the content to the users.

Electroacoustic techniques have been at the core of the development of modern music technology for the professional and consumer markets - for creation, processing and mediation of sounding material.  The digitization of procedures and processes bring about convergence in tools and methods from different disciplines, and music technology has become familiar to wide user groups in society.  Nearly all music and sound that we hear are mediated through technology, and artificial sound and technologically processed content is everywhere.  The entertainment industry especially has known how to make use of our cognitive system in the production of media content, and plays on the spectral cues that make us feel the whole range of emotions that belong to being human.

Research in music technology is large, and spans a wide range.  A large body of work on interactive systems in combination with signal processing and delivery of content yields interesting results for music as well as sound art and a modern branch of visual art, where sound and visual elements are highly integrated.  Recent research on gestures in performance will lead to better links between signal processing and human interfaces.

 

Possible use of music technology in museum contexts

Examples of auditory scenes useful for mediation of cultural history could be, for example, soundscapes filled with wooden sounds from Viking-age manufacturing and construction, or natural soundscapes recorded at historical sites for early settlements, etc.  A somewhat aging example from York's Jorvik Viking Centre is briefly described in [6]. The soundscapes could be produced to maintain authenticity as well as possible, or augmented to pull specific features to the front, depending on the mediation focus.  Choices will have to be made and accounted for, as in all other purpose-driven representations.

Soundscapes can also be tailored so that each visitor's experience becomes acoustically unique, as it is in natural contexts. The visitors can be outfitted with open headsets, small devices for tracking of placement and movement in virtual acoustic spaces, etc., and these technologies allow for individual interaction, and reception of, content.  Sudden sound events, and sounds that move, create surprises and can help in creating a credible dramaturgy.  It is easy to imagine how objects on display in a room that is filled with sounds from an environment where the objects belong, will be well situated for interpretation.  Physical interaction with materials, with auditory and possibly haptic feedback, further deepens the basis for creation of meaning.  User interaction can easily be mapped to triggering of auditory events, and the total experience can be strengthened through these deliberate calculations of action/reaction.

Electroacoustic techniques allow for construction of artificial environments, through crafting of sounding material, and methods for parameter changes that mimic the physical behaviour of sounds.  The rapid increase in processing power over the last five years has made real-time interaction with sounding material possible on an unprecedented scale, and these possibilities for real-time interaction have in turn encouraged research and development of new interaction methods, further strengthening the links to modern music technology.  These technologies are constantly being explored in the arts, through concerts and other stage performances, installations and sound art.

 

Examples of use

Sound art and installations that include sound are not new art genres, and digital music technology has become common also in these fields.  NOTAM has over the last 12 years been involved in production of a number of educational initiatives with mediation of cultural history as one of the objectives.  They have all drawn on the traditions of sound art and electroacoustic composition in their realization, and have been realized in collaboration with educators and composers.

Several of these have been directed towards children, and have been structured as "sound walks" with tasks that needed to be solved, or material that needed to be selected for further work in the project.  The sound walks consisted of physical areas where recordings of sounds that could have occurred at the site or in the theme of the walk were distributed, and where the participants needed to relate to these sounds by answering questions about what they were, or by evaluating and selecting some of the sounds for use in another part of the project. 

The sounds were activated by the students, who manipulated a number of custom-made controllers that gave the sounds an experimental, physical front-end.  There were also plaques with texts that helped students maintain a focus on the sounds from the textual perspective of the project theme.  Soundscapes constructed to give examples of possible ambience for the theme of the sound walk were also used, and they were augmented to provide dramatic effects and thus help keep the pupils engaged.  All sound walks included a workshop, where students could play with the sounds they had selected or heard, and perform with them for the other students.  This was done with a number of simple music technologies, such as hardware samplers, computer programs for signal processing, and different controllers. Our impression was that the pupils thoroughly enjoyed their participation, and that local historical or other topics were successfully mediated through the interactive use of sound.  The technology in the projects, as well as their design, was kept simple, in order to let the process be as transparent as possible for the participants.

Other mediation initiatives have been art installations.  In 2002, NOTAM, in collaboration with NRK, produced "Norway, a country of sound – Norway remixed" [7], a sound installation where the sounding material were recorded and streamed into the installation from 20 locations around the entire country.  The material was chosen for its significance in the local context.  This material was presented unchanged in 20 open "sound showers", and also in a custom designed listening room.  In the listening room the visitor could choose any two sound sources, and apply any two of a number of pre-made sound processing routines on the material.  The sounding results were streamed to the Internet.  The streaming of sound material and use of Internet were intended to make Norway aware of itself, to put it in ambitious terms. Streaming, sound processing and presentation was all supported by modern music technology.  More than 6000 people visited the listening room during the ten days the installation was in place, and the visitors' protocol shows plenty of evidence of the memories and reflections of things past and present that was activated by the presented sound.

One last example on implementation is a combination of workshop and sound installation.  In 2005, NOTAM produced "House of Language", a sound installation based on materials developed in a series of school workshops.  The students would work in the text-sound tradition, and play with spoken language through intonation, meaning and composition based on the emergent qualities of their experiments.  The workshops were conducted by two composers and one writer, and took place in a municipality populated by immigration from many regions of Norway and abroad.  The sounds from the workshops were subjected to a number of sound processing routines before they were placed in a public sound art installation and introduced to the general public.  Reports show that the installation was successful and popular, and that the use of music technology for mediation of cultural language variations was appropriate and relevant.

 

Conclusions, future work

Our work with music technology for exhibitions has not been systematic, however the results suggest that music technology is beneficial for augmenting contexts, and creating focus on specific actions or objects.  In order to develop research in this area, a more systematic approach must be taken, with structured gathering of data according to different mediation models.  This type of systematic investigation will work well as collaboration between technologically oriented institutions and environments, and mediation experts.

As the boundaries between art disciplines become less distinctive, and as technological advances in one discipline are adopted across several disciplines, the expectations for better mediation models increase, and a constructive way of meeting these expectations would be to adopt the approach from the arts themselves – convergence of tools and cross-disciplinary presentation of ideas and constructs.

Museum mediation will benefit from closer contact and collaboration with other disciplines, such as acoustics and psychoacoustics, for construction of multi-dimensional and more effective mediation schemes with audio components.  This way of creating an extended basis for interpretation and assignment of meaning would be in tune with the development in other sectors of society.

 

Literature

August Strindberg,The Red Room, trans. Elizabeth Sprigge, J.M. Dent & Son, London, 1967, (Everyman Edition), p. 2.

 

References

[1] Murray Schafer. (1977). The Tuning of the World. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto
[2] Albert S. Bregman. (1994). Auditory Scene Analysis.  New York, MIT Press.
[3] Juan G. Roederer. (1995). The Physics and Psyhophysics of Music.  New York, Springer.
[4] Thomas D. Rossing. (1990). The Science of Sound. New York, Addison-Wesley
[5] Perry Cook. (1999). Music, Cognition and Computerized Sound.  New York, MIT press.
[6] Trevor Wishart. (¨~1970). http://www.trevorwishart.co.uk/jfull.html
[7] http://www6.nrk.no/lydkunst/