This article presents the results of a study based on a group of participants' interactions with an experimental sound installation at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK. The installation used audio augmented reality to attach virtual sound sources to a vintage radio receiver from the museum's collection, with a view to understanding the potentials of this technology for promoting exploration and engagement within museums and galleries. We employ a practice-based design ethnography, including a thematic analysis of our participants' interactions with spatialised interactive audio, and present an identified sequence of interactional phases. We discuss how audio augmented artefacts can communicate and engage visitors beyond their traditional confines of line-of-sight, and how visitors can be drawn to engage further, beyond the realm of their original encounter. Finally, we provide evidence of how contextualised and embodied interactions, along with authentic audio reproduction, evoked personal memories associated with our museum artefact, and how this can promote interest in the acquisition of declarative knowledge. Additionally, through the adoption of a functional and theoretical aura-based model, we present ways in which this could be achieved, and, overall, we demonstrate a material object's potential role as an interface for engaging users with, and contextualising, immaterial digital audio archival content.

This paper introduces two ongoing projects where audio augmented reality is implemented as a means of engaging museum and gallery visitors with audio archive material and associated objects, artworks and artefacts. It outlines some of the issues surrounding the presentation and engagement with sound based material within the context of the cultural institution, discusses some previous and related work on approaches to the cultural application of audio augmented reality, and describes the research approach and methodology currently engaged with in developing an increased understanding in this area. Additionally, it discusses the project within the context of related cultural and sound studies literature, presents some initial conclusions as a result of a practice-based approach, and outlines the next steps for the project.

Losing Her Voice is a new opera which highlights the challenges of subtly interweaving digital technologies into established cultural forms. Audience members were encouraged to use their own mobile phones to interact with on-stage projections before, during and after the performance. We chart the trajectories of participation that were designed into the premiere performances of this work, and how these unfolded in practice. We identify the strategies that were effective to: encourage adoption of the mobile app; interweave use with the other elements of the opera performance; make it consistent with the content; and ensure it complemented but was not essential to the show. We highlight the way in which three canonical trajectories must be woven together in this experience: the standard trajectory of “a night at the opera”; the dramatic arc of the specific work; and the audience member's use of their own device.