Sculpting a Mobile Musical Soundtrack

Abstract

We present an in-the-wild project to design and study a mobile musical soundtrack that enhances the experience of visiting a sculpture park. As with soundtracks for films and games, the goal was to enhance the emotional and narrative aspects of the experience while remaining in the background. We describe a compositional approach in which we first established a broad musical landscape before treating specific exhibits with detailed musical trajectories. Our study reveals how our soundtrack dramatically shaped visitors' experiences while they remained largely unaware of its operation. We distil seven experiential factors to be addressed by mobile soundtracks alongside ten compositional guidelines.

The user experience of mobile music making: An ethnographic exploration of music production and performance in practice

“…Instruments are no longer designed for a specific purpose and now digital instruments provide utility beyond performance (Benford, Hazzard, Chamberlain, & Xu, 2015.) The role of performing and consuming audio is also changing due to technology shifts (Hazzard, Benford, & Burnett, 2015.) The emergence of social networks and the utilization of technology to engager with social listening is also a key concern (Bull, 2005;Su, 2013;Yadati & Larson, 2014.…”

The Rough Mile

“…Many of these same factors have also been noted in the work of Michel Bull, who gives a rich picture of how people actively use music played through headphones whilst on the move to re-astheticise their environment [10]. The work of [18] also shares similarities with the band Bluebrain [4], who have composed a number of locative albums to be listened to at specific locations. In these and other examples, key moments in the audio unfold in synchrony with key locales in the location.…”

“…This is also true of audio-described experiences through space' [24, p. 128, emphasis in the original]. We drew motivation from this affirmation as well as from [18] and [4], namely the synchronisation of audio events to physical artefacts. We used the developing narrative and the built environment, such as the twists and turns of the streets, as a template for our musical composition, including the placement of and transitions between audio elements.…”

“…Most locative audio experiences use headphones, which have been noted to prompt an immersive state for the listener in terms of abatement, a loss of feelings of isolation, increased focus on landmarks in the physical environment, and a sense of congruence between the composed audio and the physical environment [18]. Many of these same factors have also been noted in the work of Michel Bull, who gives a rich picture of how people actively use music played through headphones whilst on the move to re-astheticise their environment [10].…”

Supporting Group Coherence in a Museum Visit

“…The approach balances orchestration of the experience with visitors" own agency; by scaffolding rather than directing, we encourage visitors to carve their own trajectories through the experience, rather than designing for a canonical way of visiting [3]. This is a common approach in visiting experiences with mediascapes [14] and participatory performance [27]. This manual approach to scaffolding rather than directing experiences even extends to the use of headphones (traditionally a thorny issue in mobile CSCW systems [1,17]) with visitors manually putting them on and taking them off as required.…”