Abstract 

Keywords: Soundscape, Augmented Reality, Cultural Heritage, Embodied Interaction, Performance Studies, Interactive Media, Bone Conduction Sound.

Weeping Bamboo: Resonances from Within is an exploration of new forms of communicating and preserving indigenous forms of oral culture. It is a locational sound art piece offering a site-specific, reactive soundscape that is experienced in public at the Plaza de Boli´var of Manizales, Colombia. The project builds on the notion of resonance, the correlated vibration of bodies, to transmit sonic, tactile, and gestural experiences. It creates a rich layering of different stages of the history of Manizales through an augmented reality experience that merges environmental sounds with a spatialized soundscape. Through a custom-made headset a spatialized audio experience is transmitted by way of the bone structure of the skull, which makes it seem as if it were coming from the space within the listener’s head. The multi-channel soundscape merges with the environmental sounds perceived through the ear. Beginning with narratives of indigenous myths in concert with today’s environment, the project offers a narrative soundscape that is correlated with the actual geography of the plaza through a GPS location-tracking unit, inertial sensors and a microphone.

• Andreas Kratky is a media artist and assistant professor in the Interactive Media and Games Division and the Media Arts+Practice Division of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts (USA). Kratky’s work focuses on new forms of cinema and the poetics of the database. It spans the arts, human computer interaction and digital humanities and comprises several award winning media art projects like “Bleeding Through – Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986”, the algorithmic cinema system “Soft Cinema”, and the interactive opera “The Jew of Malta”. Kratky’s work has been shown internationally in Europe, USA, Japan, and Korea in institutions like the ICA in London, ICC in Tokyo, HDKW in Berlin, Centre George Pompidou in Paris, and REDCAT in Los Angeles. For his work on the modeling software “Xfrog” Kratky was nominated for the Science and Technology Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences.
• Juri Hwang is a media artist, researcher and currently a PHD candidate in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice in University of Southern California, USA. Her research focuses on sonic culture and the role of media in the formation of memory. Engaging in an analysis of the cultural shifts of media usage and technologies she investigates the relationship between means of representation and how we perceive and remember. Through the analysis of still images, moving images, stereoscopic 3D images and sound, her work develops a sensitivity toward the artifacts that media introduce into our perceptual relationship to our environment. Her work includes the award winning project “Bleeding Through Layers of Los Angeles: 1920-1986”, “Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California” and “Venture to the Interior.” Juri’s current projects comprise “Somatic Echo,” an embodied sonic experience engaging bone conducted sound, and “Nightfield,” a sound installation exploring the immersive and embodied nature of sonic memory.

Full text (PDF) p.  352-357