Sound provides cultural context and character to place. It was used as a focal modality to investigate how to create delight out of routine within the confines of a university hallway.
Remote Sounds presents a sound installation concept situated within a transient space where pedestrians find themselves ephemerally transported from a mundane hallway and amidst the bird calls of the Amazon forest, marine whistles of the Antarctic region, and roars of the Tibetan Valley, all while removed from the physical distance that separates them.
As part of the newly constructed extension of Syracuse University’s Alan Gerry Center for Media and Innovation, a 30ft interactive screen display was installed with depth sensors and speakers.
Its placement in a hallway drew low engagement, default behaviors, leaving passerbyers entirely inundated and unbothered with familiar or predictable content. New content needed to hold enough differentiation, intrigue, and alternation to change the experience nearly every time.
Once pedestrians realized the former visual content only mirrored the passerbyer’s body form and shape, there was no extended interaction.
100 pedestrians walking along the corridor were part of an observational study on how to best design content to accommodate various engagement levels to prevent expectation. The new design was adapted based on the following metrics:
Sound which had not been previously integrated into the space was used to break the monotony of passerbyers’ journey along the corridor. The floor acts as a literal playspace, triggering soundscapes manipulated at the detected walking speed while the wall display screen features visual feedback of the auditory output.
One animal group from each region is presented as the primary set of interchangeable sound snippets minorly cut and arranged to be individually distinct yet realistic of their habitat characteristics. Below are some of the sound snippets used.
Click then hover over icon to preview sound
A hidden responsive grid system consisted of sections each designated with its own set of sounds collected from the three most isolated regions in the world, the amazon rainforest, antarctica, and tibetan valley. To be selected at random, the grid arrangements varied based on traffic.
A heavy influx of pedestrians would create a minimal, more ambient listen, whereas smaller groups allow for a detailed and layered compilation. When the space is vacated, the regional location alternates and a different set of sounds occupy the grid.
Since the screen was such a key component of the space, both photo and video collages were added as visual references to the regional soundscapes. The generative image collages were designed to complement the overlapping and random characteristics of the sonic output elements.
Previous work