Artist Statement

Borrow an aura backpack and experience this unique sound world, but be aware that you destroy the world as you listen to it; in fact the landscape you hear is created from the remnants left from other users’ walks. Eventually the artwork will be completely eroded.

Aura is a located sound project that explores notions of consumption and ownership by allowing users to effect an audio landscape as they move within the real world. Your movements are tracked by GPS as you explore the area around the Waterfront Hall and are layered onto a record of all the previous users; the resulting topography around your position on this map is represented in surround sound. You can hear the resulting eroded landscape, left to right and front to back.
Imagine a playing field after a fresh falling of snow. The snow lies evenly and untrodden. This represents an empty aura sound world, which if you wore an aura backpack, would sound like soft white noise balanced with a gently undulating hum. Someone walks across the field leaving footprints, the snow is sullied, eroded; the walker has left a patina in the world. In the aura world this patina is first represented by shifts in the intensity and changes in filtering; the audio moving as you cross the footprints. As more people walk in the world the sound becomes more and more fragmented and distorted, leaving smaller and smaller pockets of unconsumed beauty.                                                                                                                                                            Details of material/media: Surround Sound, GPS and Digital Compass enabled backpacks, with local wifi and server. SuperCollider, Processing, Arduino and PHP, bespoke electronics. muio.org/aura1

• Steve Symons, Manchester, UK   muio.org