who are you?

Listen closely. Someone was here before you.

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in development as a project for mix

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In this walk through the past, you will discover the stories of strangers, and of yourself.

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Overview

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As they walk around the grounds, listeners will hear a binaural, spatial audio experience that blends the present with audio reflections of the past.

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Reflecting the past: Sounds like hearing a car pass by when there isn’t one there in real life, will trigger users to note the ways the past is both consonant and dissonant with the present.

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Reflecting on others: As listeners walk, they will begin overhearing conversations of others from the prior recording. These stories will give the listener ways to imagine the lives of strangers, and relate them to their own life.

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Reflecting on oneself: Surreal audio moments that confront the listener and ask them questions directly will serve to play with the listener’s understanding of the experience and cause them to reflect on their own story.

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Details

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Visitors will be able to use their own phones to install the mobile app we have already developed called MIX. Once the visitor puts on headphones connected to their phone, they can begin and put their phone away for the duration of the experience.

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Visitors will walk around freely throughout the Hirshhorn Museum grounds and the sculpture garden, and the app will detect where they are. They will hear binaural audio of recordings made months before from the same spots where they are at that moment, augmenting the user’s present experience with the audio of the past captured in the same space.

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As visitors move, they will “bump into” conversations that they can overhear and listen to. Visitors will be able to “eavesdrop” in a way they normally cannot, and get small windows into the lives of others from the past. These moments will be scripted but based on interviews and conversations had with locals and visitors on a lead up trip to Hirshhorn Museum in January.

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There will be audio moments that break the fourth wall, like the sound of someone walking up from behind them asking them if they dropped something or similar questions. Through these experiences the visitor will be prompted to imagine the experience of recording the space, and wonder about who it was that recorded it. As the visitor continues overhearing stories and conversations, the audio moments will become increasingly surreal.

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Visitors can experience this spatially in any order they want. The conversations and stories they can overhear are placed in static locations they can discover. The narrative beats that pull the visitor into the story will be experienced over 20 minutes, and not everyone will get the same audio moments. A group where each is walking individually through the experience will be able to discuss what they heard and may realize that their stories deviated.

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