Posted on: November 23, 2022
These postcards and their accompanying mobile app were developed in collaboration with sound artist and composer Aleks Kolkowski. This set of audio augmented reality postcards, in combination with their accompanying smartphone application, enable users to create an explorable virtual museum soundscape. Using the image recognition and tracking capabilities of Augmented Reality (AR), the postcards, when recognised by the smartphone’s camera, trigger sound recordings of the associated museum exhibits. These sound recordings are delivered to the listener binaurally, with six-degrees-of-freedom. This enables listeners to construct a virtual soundscape the perception of which changes in relation to their orientation and position in space, just as sound does in the physical world. In this way the sounds of the recorded exhibits are perceived to emanate from the postcards themselves amongst a backdrop of museum ambience, which includes a passing group of visiting school children, footsteps, chatter and the sound from the café at the end of the gallery. This experience was developed during the global pandemic of 2021 to enable users to remotely immersive themselves within the soundscape of London’s Science Museum and populate their physicality with the sounds of exhibits from the museum’s permanent collection using the everyday printed cardboard postcards and a publicly downloadable and free mobile phone app.
The Android AR Sound Postcard Player app is available to download for free here.
A set of 4 postcards are available to download and print out here.
Posted on: September 14, 2022
The Laboratory of Psychical Research sound installation was created by Aleksander Kolkowski, kitt price and Laurence Cliffe. It was produced especially for the Media of Mediumship research project as part of the Being Human Festival 2021, hosted in partnership with Senate House Library. The Court Room at Senate House, University of London, played host to a reimagining of The National Laboratory of Psychical Research established in 1926 at UCL by Harry Price, psychic investigator. Visitors… read more
Posted on: March 7, 2018
I. Introduction The availability of locative and biophysical sensors and the personal data they capture offer new opportunities for personal soundtrack generation. Existing approaches to generative and interactive musical composition often rely on pre-composed segments of music [1], and can be plagued with issues regarding musical mechanization, repetitiveness and a lack of creative integrity [1]. This paper presents on-going research into new methods and understanding to support listener’s in self-generating and performing their own interactive,… read more