Sonic Monuments: Methodologies for Collaborative Performance and Audio AR
Friday, February 14, 2020: 10:50 AM
Lake Erie (Hilton Chicago)
This presentation will detail the co-creation methodologies, technical approaches and aesthetic concepts behind the making of a new sonic monument that resides on the Rutgers University Newark campus. The artwork commemorates the Black Organization of Students activism in the late-nineteen sixties that reshaped public higher education in New Jersey through challenging exclusionary policies to currently make Rutgers University Newark the most diverse student body in the nation. Using hours of archival audio interviews, the piece activates the architecture of the campus with the language of BOS members, their goals, aspirations and strategies to pressure the administration for change.
The collaboratively created artwork projects synchronized sounds across the Brutalist architectural façades to choreograph audible reflections throughout the main campus plaza, producing an immersive 360º listening experience. The presentation at CAA will disclose the techniques for documentation that extend the accessibility of the artwork. The piece is publicly available using Audio AR enabling future students and visitors to walk through the space with headphones and hear the sonic reflections change and fluctuate based on their location, creating a sonic time warp presenting a perceptual experience as if they were in the plaza during the live performance. In addition, the presentation will chart my efforts to apply co-creation methods learned in MIT’s Open Doc Lab, where I am a Fellow, and provide useful recommendations for co-creative work.
The collaboratively created artwork projects synchronized sounds across the Brutalist architectural façades to choreograph audible reflections throughout the main campus plaza, producing an immersive 360º listening experience. The presentation at CAA will disclose the techniques for documentation that extend the accessibility of the artwork. The piece is publicly available using Audio AR enabling future students and visitors to walk through the space with headphones and hear the sonic reflections change and fluctuate based on their location, creating a sonic time warp presenting a perceptual experience as if they were in the plaza during the live performance. In addition, the presentation will chart my efforts to apply co-creation methods learned in MIT’s Open Doc Lab, where I am a Fellow, and provide useful recommendations for co-creative work.