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Statement:
What
can sound contribute to the museum
environment?
Sound
unlike any other medium, engages the audience
actively.
By, active, I mean that sound comes out to
meet you; it is omnipresent; it penetrates the
body, literally entering the ear canal and causing
a disturbance in the inner ear - a very intermit
experience when you think about
it.
Those two characteristics of sound, active
engagement and intimacy are unique to sound in the
museum
environment.
I utilise these two characteristics by
approaching the design of sound in the museum
context in two layers - environment, or context and
specific information delivery, usually
text.
I combine these design challenges as if
making a site specific sound installation
work.
Environment
- Context
As
a sound designer I am interested in creating
immersive sound environments that use a number of
speakers, and usually programmable sound
spatialisation technologies (such as the Richmond
Audio Box, used for the first time in Australia in
the Immigration Museum, Melbourne) to capitalise on
the active engagement characteristic of sound by
discarding the old paradigm of sound being
dispersed from a single point (i.e. one or two
speakers next to the exhibit) and replacing it with
a sound stage, programmed to move through the
exhibition space in
realtime.
This kind of sound spatialisation creates an
environment that focuses the visitor on the world
of the exhibition
content.
It can be used to suggest an historical
context (as I did in the Ballarat, Eureka Stockade
Centre) or to create the sense of journey and
movement (as i did in the Immigration Museum).
Regardless
of the specific design intention, the creation of
an environmental context for the exhibition is a
particularly powerful tool for which the
omnipresent character of sound is perfectly
suited.
Within this aspect of museum design, the
movement of sound elements through the space in
realtime creates a sense of the sound elements
taking on a physical presence within the
space.
If we were making a play, these sound
elements would be regarded as a
character.
The creation of a sound environment lends an
experiential character to the museum experience
which can be very powerful in focusing the visitor
on the immediate situation of those people people
whose life experiences have created the subject of
the exhibition.
Specific
Information Delivery
The
museum exhibit usually requires some form of text
delivery.
The use of spoken text is a powerful way of
characterising and bringing to life the person or
situation being
presented.
The delivery of this kind of information is
largely controlled by a couple of pragmatic factors
- the script and the consideration of spoken text
audio bleeding into other exhibition
areas.
In my view there is enormous potential for
the use of a ìguiding characterî, a
narrator to lead you through the museum experience,
to call you over and tell you a
story.
This potential could be realised simply by
using a small sonar sensor fitted into a character
statue.
The sonar sensor measures distance, and
could be set to trigger different sound files at
different distances from the
exhibit.
When the visitor is 8 meters away, such a
system could trigger a call to come over
ìhey there, heh, come over here, I have a
story to tell youî, as you get closer it
could say ìcome on, come closer, you wont
belive what happened hereî, and then when the
visitor is within 2 meters of the statue, it starts
to tell the story ìyou know, just around the
corner from here in 18xx, there was a .....î
(clearly I am not a script writer). Similarly there
could be a character within the exhibit audio -
ìare, there you are, Iíve been
waiting for you - now this bone handled cup used to
belong to....î
In
my view the use of text in some museum exhibits is
a good way of providing information to visitors,
but is severely restricted in itís current
use, mostly as disembodied readers of written
information, which does nothing to engage the
visitor.
The
containment of spoken text or background sound for
multiple exhibitions within close proximity is
still largely
unresolved.
I have pursued the design of custom speaker
arrays that project a very tight sound beam, in
combination with appropriate acoustic treatment of
the exhibition space, but have only achieved
limited success in this
area.
Far more attention needs to be given to the
acoustic properties of built spaces by architects
and exhibition designers when audio is to be
uses.
Sound
as part of the AV team
Appropriate
sound design sound present information that is not
present within other media in the exhibition, with
the exception of text, some of which may be
presented in the written
form.
Sound design within the museum context is in
this way similar to sound design for
film.
A designer cognisant of the qualities of
sound will augment the other media rather than
compete with it.
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