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Although all our senses are engaged when within
an exhibition, often the sound is left to chance.
In the Eureka Stockade Visitorís Centre,
sound is harnessed and orchestrated to add texture
and life to one of Australiaís most
interesting historic stories of rebellion.
The sound scape includes the movement and voices
of visitors and staff, the natural sound of running
water, carriage wheels and horses hooves, crowd
noises, gunfire and people speaking and calling
out. Some of the sounds are accompanied by
projected footage, and towards the end of the
visitors circuit, a film is shown within a
theatrette,
The all too common pitfalls of poor acting and
production, intrusiveness, repetition, sound spill
and sound tracks that do not adapt to the general
ambient sound level, all seem to have been cleverly
avoided in this exhibition. Essential text is kept
sufficiently brief so that it does not compete with
the sound. Any sound spill tends to mix well with
other sound tracks and what repetition there is,
remains relatively unobtrusive. Happily, the acting
and production are both of a high standard.
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It there are any difficulties with the sound
that can be picked out, it is the uncertainty over
where in the sequence of projected speeches the
exhibition visitor might commence viewing them and
the fact that whilst the exhibitionís visual
peak occurs in the battle scene room, this is not
matched by a sound peak. Also missed is a more
gradual sound transition between the theatrical and
the more conventional exhibition sections.
The full potential of what sound can evoke
rather than an attempted physical recreation, is
not taken to the limits in this soundscape.
The audio visuals come into their own with the
retelling of the story of a pub murder. This
re-enactment is projected onto a pub window giving
the impression that the visitor is actually
witnessing the attack from the vantage point inside
the hotel. Similarly satisfying was the link
between the sound of natural flowing water at both
the beginning and the end of the exhibition.
Whereas films and theatre tell their stories
through sound and pictures to a captive audience,
when in an exhibition, the audience is captive in
neither time nor space. Making an exhibition
cohesive therefore, despite the resulting
disruption to links between the picture and sound,
takes skill and creativity.
With careful handling exhibitions could become a
multi‑media art form in their own right. This
exhibition advances such progress through its use
of multi media techniques.
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This
article was originally published in the inSite Journal of
Museums Australia
