Sound Cairns: Virtual Spaces

Joseph Reinsel
Communication and Visual Arts Department University of Michigan-Flint 303 East Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48502, U.S.A.

joe@joereinsel.org

Abstract.
I will discuss the ideologies and approaches that form the basis of a series of audio projects that I have worked on over the past 7 years. Each of these uses sound and location as Sound Cairns". I will explain the details of a Sound Cairn by showing examples of my own. The virtual net-based object of the "Sound Cairn" creates questions by stratifying the Cartesian built environments through the presented locative media projects.

1 Introduction
"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; "1 Place, location, and sound are some of the foundations for listening. Each of these elements are different aspects of an experiential moment in time and space, whether we are listening to the flow of water in a stream in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a concert in Lincoln Center. These factors create this experience from the constant motion of the sonic "fog" that is draped around us. In the multi-planar realities of the digital world, each of the planes extends our understanding of the physical environment and as to how we navigate and interpret each place, person, or moment in time. The virtual net-based object of the "Sound Cairn" creates questions by stratifying the Cartesian built environments with locative media projects. This paper discusses the concept of Sound Cairns as it relates to the ideologies and
1

Charles Dickens " Bleak House, 1853

approaches underpinning a series of audio projects that I have worked on over the past seven years.

Cairns and Sound Cairns

A cairn is a stand of rocks set on top of each other as either a place marker or a physical memory. They have been used for many reasons and in many cultures throughout history. Just as physical cairns mark places associated with meaningful experience, sound cairns use recordings of experience to mark locations. One can either leave a stone by recording their experience or witness the experience of another by listening to the others recording. These sound cairns have been represented as virtual web based points that users access by mobile devices with Global Positioning Systems (GPS), written descriptions and navigations to that place, or links associated with QR code scan markers. Cairns arise organically from the experiences of users. In this way, they differ from works limited to a gallery, because they invite natural, casual participation in their creation. In other words, they are placed as they happened. Their purpose is not to be seen, but rather to be found. This difference in the display of the cairn brings meaning and a more poignant transformation in the person discovering and the witnessing the cairn. Cairns are not primarily found on maps; they exist as ghosts of memories placed in space and time, spread out through the physical landscape and, in the case of sound cairns, connected to the Internet. With the advent of mobile technology, computing has become ubiquitous. The software appliances we use change the way we interface with physical and virtual space daily. We use these devices to navigate visual art, design, technology, architecture, location, and sound. It is on the basis of this multi-modal paradigm that I apply the concept of the sound cairn as an object placed and experienced at a fixed point.

Cyberspace and Physical Space

Within this paradigm, the concept of the sound cairn became formalized as it connected to current topics related to sound in information and communication technology (ICT), specifically as it relates to transcendence in the digital world. With the advent of mobile technology, our digital world is not somewhere other than here; we live in a hybridized state between the World Wide Web and physical space. These concepts depart sharply from early theories of cyberspace introduced by William Gibson2 and transmission of place discussed by Nicolas Negroponte3.
2 3

Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. Negroponte, Nicolas. (1995), Being Digital, London: Hodder and Stoughton

Each of these discusses the digital world as an alternate plane, that is situated in a place separated from our physical world. Negroponte said that digital living will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time, and the transmission of place itself will start to become possible. With the sound cairns, in contrast, it is the linkage of locational experience and the sound marker that is important; in other words, it emphasizes the critical experience of being in a specific place at a specific time. Creating a way to talk about this hybridization was crucial to understand my creative process. I began to explore the root concepts of creating node points of conversation with technology. The importance in sharing this theoretical concept of the sound cairn is to create a more formal relationship with these moments of sound and the attempt to create fixed points where the delineating lines of the physical and digital world hybridize into new definitions of public space and digital art. I explored sound cairns in three projects, Locusono, URBANtells, and the Pavement. Each project contributed to the development of the topic and illustrated a different way to establish and witness the sound cairns.

Locusono

Fig. 1 Prototype mobile design for the Locusono locative media application

The mobile design project Locusono allows one to share stories, events, and histories from their physical location. By linking a GPS location to an audio recording created by the user, Locusono weaves both together into a new immersive experience, using sound to engage people through listening and participation. People will be able to hear stories, sounds, and conversations made by other participants and also make their own recording(s) that will record their GPS location so that someone could then find it later. This is a new way to think about creative engagement and building

pathways through asynchronous connections. When the user records the story, it is uploaded to a web server where it can be accessed by anyone. These stories can then be heard at the recorded location with a mobile device or through a desktop web application. The effect of this project was to think of the sound cairns as technologically defined locations linked with GPS. The sound cairns in this project could be found at their location coordinates as soon as the segment was recorded and continuously after that. By allowing users to record their own segment, Locusono creates a network of cairns that become the voices of the community.

URBANtells

Fig.2. Participant listening to sounds from the URBANtells Cambridge, MA project. Art

With James Rouvelle and Steve Bradley, I co-created URBANtraces, a neighborhood radio project that used low-power FM transmitters broadcasting at 87.7 FM. The transmitters were located at various sites, including homes, shops, and art spaces, in a transitional neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. The broadcasts were available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in August 2008. Using an FM radio, participants listened to stories, sounds, and other sonic art forms created by participants who live or work in the Station North Arts District and Greenmount West area of Baltimore. As they walked, the radio would receive the audio recordings as the participant entered the radius of each radio transmitter.

Projects created with URBANtells focused on giving a new meaning to urban areas. For this reason, people, including technologically-nave people or those with limited access to technology, had to be able to easily engage with project; this led to the use of AM radios, which provided a familiar and accessible entry point for participants. Since radios were used in these projects, the participants impressions were different from the projects that employed smartphones. As a person walked the street with a portable radio, they weaved in and out of radio static and the pre-recorded segments. We did not tell the audience the locations of the transmitters: they had to seek them out in a general area. We wanted people to hear the recordings as the walked the street and discover them as if they were using a divining rod to draw them out of the landscape.

The Pavement

Fig 3. The Pavement, Grand Rapids (2012) and Washington D.C. (2013)

The Pavement was a temporary public art project where, at specific locations, I have made chalk markings with stencils or installed ground stickers that could be scanned using a smartphone application. The scanned code then accessed an audio file to be played on a smartphone. These audio files were content from Jane Jacobs book Death and the Life of Great

American Cities (1992). The short section clearly and frankly describes sidewalks as they relate to human use of the city. When one listens to these audio recordings out in the streets after scanning the QR code to access them, one hears the words of Jacobs while being immersed in the reality of their present location. Placing these recordings this way magnifies the meaning of the reading. The Pavement is an experiment in using sound cairns for fixed social commentary. Each of the segments that could be scanned in different locations around Washington, DC and Grand Rapids, MI were placed in on busy sidewalks where they could be found easily. I see each of the recorded segments4 as very evocative and by placing the QR indicators on the sidewalk, it not only created a sound cairn when someone scanned the QR code; the resulting audio also instilled a new impression of that particular area of the street upon hearing Jacobs writings and seeing the architecture of the immediate area.

Conclusions
Each of these projects demonstrates different facets of the sound cairn concept. Each situates sound objects in space. The sound cairns may or may not have physical presence themselves, but they are directly connected to a physical location through the Internet. By link sound and technology to physical spaces, sound cairns create monuments, caches, node points, or other markers to change and interpret our surroundings and create a new fabric built of peoples voices and the sounds around them. If we were to step into the future, sound cairns could exist for long periods of time, being visited again and again, always playing the same sound, witnessing the same experience. These audio markers would stand like a stone in the landscape, to be found and lost time and time again.

You may hear and read the segments that were used in The Pavement by going to http://www.joereinsel.org/the_pavement

References and Suggested Readings

Benjamin, W., & Arendt, H. (1986). Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. Blesser, B., & Salter, L. (2007). Spaces Speak, Are you listening?: Experiencing aural architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press. Dickens, C. (1867; (pref. 1867)). Bleak house. Phila: Porter & Coates. Gibson, W. (1986; 1986, c1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation Of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters; Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Grau, O. (2003). Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Jacobs, J.. (1992). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books. Knightmare. (1996). How to Hide Things in Public Places. Port Townsend, Wash.: Loompanics Unlimited. Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press. Negroponte, N. (1995). Being Digital. New York: Knopf. Nordahl, R., Serafin, S., Turchet, L., & Nilsson, N. C. (2012). A multimodal architecture for simulating natural interactive walking in virtual environments. Psychnology, 9(3), 245-268. Shepard, M. (2011). Sentient city: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. New York :Cambridge, MA: Architectural League of New York ;MIT Press.