Designing an interactive installation with sounds from rural areas - Explorations of the interactivity with sounds

Abstract: This project takes a research through design approach, presenting the design process of an interactive sonic installation – SoundEscape – mounted on a walking bridge in Ørstedsparken, Copenhagen. SoundEscape makes people interact with sounds from rural areas of Denmark into the middle of the city. Featuring speakers and motion sensors, the prototype uses people crossing the bridge as an input for building up a soundscape – layer by layer as the person detected moves on. SoundEscape is just one prototype exploring how people can build up a soundscape through their movement across the bridge. The paper suggest more areas of the interactive design space to explore. Designing the installation, we went through four phases: field research, exploration synthesis, and concept development. Participants where included in the process to collect sound input from rural areas in Denmark. In all phases, we kept a close dialogue with the context, grounding design decisions in the observations and explorations we did on the bridge. We made two tests of the prototype: on a mini-scale model and in the park context. The paper presents a framework for interactive sonic installations that are used to analyse SoundEscape and compares it with another sonic installation on a bridge that have a different form of interactivity. Based on this analysis, the findings from the design process, and the two tests, the paper discuss the interactivity in the prototype. The paper suggest how the interactions with the soundscape can be further extended.