Museum News

Audio Media for Public Spaces

by Bernard L. Krause, Ph.D.
Wild Sanctuary, Inc.
Glen Ellen, CA

Exhibit design is theater. Great theater (assuming a successful premise) balances five major components to express one or more themes: 3-D elements, graphics, space, light and, if appropriate, sound. For impact, information transmission and cost-effectiveness, no single theatrical (exhibit) component is more forceful or conveys more information than well-produced and delivered audio. However, for the past several thousand years traditional design concepts for most museums and other public spaces have primarily conveyed information through an emphasis on the visual.

During the summer of 1906, more than a quarter of a century after the Edison innovation and the first example of sound in an exhibit, the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo were presenting live human media. An exhibit featuring Ota Benga, a Babanzele Pygmy captured in what was then the Belgian Congo, was the main visual and acoustic attraction. Even then, Ota Benga was more seen than heard. Other examples, like Ishi, the last California Yahi Native American, exhibited in Golden Gate Park between 1912 and 1915, brought 40,000 visitors a month to the exhibit to hear him sing, speak and to watch as he fashioned traditional hunting implements. Earlier examples of human display in public spaces can be traced to 1845, when a young black slave whom exhibit designers called "Jefken van de zoologie" (Little Jeff of Zoology) was featured in an Antwerp (Belgium) exhibit as a singer and dancer.

However, despite several technological developments in intervening years, it was not until the mid-20th century that new audio tape technologies were employed in exhibitry usually featuring sounds of individual creatures or short monologues. Thus they were given a tentative, but low priority in exhibit design hierarchy.

There is no precise record of the first museum to incorporate and employ recorded sound as an integral component of the exhibitry. It can be assumed, however, the event took place some time soon after the introduction of the Ampex tape recorder in 1948. Notwithstanding the few push-button exhibits that began to appear in some European and North American venues in the early 1950's, audio media did not begin to play a significant role until the early 1960's. At that time, audio playback technologies became inexpensive enough to be considered useful and exhibit designers could now bring samples of sound into displays in the form of push-button panels and audio loops, the first types of audio iteration. The visitor was now able to hear short recorded samples of a bird, mammal or cultural programs representative of the exhibit.

While these early demonstrations of audio programs were generally awkward, primitive, contextually abstracted, they were nevertheless a step toward the transformation of the medium. Also in the ‘60's, continuous, longer audio tape sound loops were introduced in an attempt to replicate the sounds of entire natural habitats for natural history museums, and nascent multi-track audio production techniques resulted in the creation of more engaging cultural programs.

Sound design is both a science and an art.

As visitors became more attuned to both the realities of natural and cultural worlds and the media environment in their homes and cinemas, they began to demand more dramatic effects and useful audio information from all aspects of exhibitry. New spatial concepts emerged -- especially in the realm of natural history exhibits that, for example, considered the sounds of ground-dwelling creatures, previously emanating from poor quality ceiling speakers, coming from the perspective where they would normally be heard. Creature audio performances of organisms normally heard at night or day, would be synchronized with special light dimmers which tracked changes for dramatic impression. Where contexts had previously been confusing and often disorienting because many audio programs were competing at the same time for attention in small or reverberant spaces, well-controlled environments could produce programs designed to totally engage the visitor focusing on the themes being conveyed. Furthermore, where earlier looped performances were incapable of identifying sounds or translating languages, this, too, could now be mitigated. In addition, certain types of audio performances had the effect of causing some observable stress on visitors -- not the least of which were the museum employees who had to endure the constant repetition. Where the relationship between what was heard and what was received by the visitor was a virtual disconnection (where the visitor heard nothing more than unrelated cacophonous noise), a significant new link to the experience was about to take place.

By the close of the 20th century,
an important shift in the design
philosophies of young
designers, more conscious of the
medium's enormous impact,
began to balance acoustic elements with the
visual in ways never before attempted.

Despite the fact that recording technologies (speakers, amplifiers and media playback systems, in particular) improved in the last quarter of the 20th century, public space designers only began to feel the competitive pressure of other electronic media and film in the last few years. It was only when the quality of museum audio media lagged behind the expectations of a younger and more demanding visitor demographic that serious attention to this dimension began to surface. Designers and administrators have now begun to realize that visitors of all ages are much more aware of the theatrical power of media, particularly that of audio. Expectations have soared as museum directors attempt to capture the attention of visitors whose experience of any medium, whether electronic or static, must be compelling in order to make an impact and hold visitor attention. It is a given well-produced audio greatly enhances the impact of visual elements common in entertainment media. As a consequence, public demand for comparable levels of quality in museum exhibitry has become more resolute and cannot be over-stated.

holds true for cultural iterations like the telling of stories, oral histories or live music performances. Continuity and context of place are maintained, while, over time, one also experiences an exciting sense of diversity and range. In addition, the system mitigates the stressful repetition of noise for both the human and non-humans present in exhibit environments. Also, the "entire world" of the museum space is under the control of one system and it becomes conflict-free. Finally, for the first time, the system addresses the issue of identification of sounds heard in the context of each performance by the implementation of graphic and text displays on, for example, flat video screens located at information rails. Fine examples of this new technology can be found at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, near Mystic, CT, and the South Carolina Aquarium (Charleston).

By incorporating this new generation of media delivery and control technology into exhibits, designers are now able to balance the visual components with the aural, giving the visitor a heightened and robust overview of a given theme engaging them in ways never before possible. That is because these systems are designed to mitigate previous oversights by integrating many levels of program material related to a single theme onto powerful digital delivery systems thus providing significant support to the visual aspects of design. Basically, this is how it works: The software of the ISS is programmed to mix a series of related sound fragments into cohesive and vigorous performances. Randomly selected, these related components are mixed dynamically into expressive themes. And the system provides many years of different performances using only a few hours of basic audio elements without ever repeating the same program -- even though program content and theme remains the same -- just like stories are revealed in the real world. Folks working in the museum venues don't go nuts hearing things repeat, and the visitor can always experience something new every time he or she returns because the exhibit is constantly refreshing itself.

In cultural settings, like the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, a complex program was created that blends an interaction between the human and non-human world. One indoor exhibit, half an acre in size, expresses a wide range of human and non-human activity in a 16th century replica of a Native American village. Visitor movement throughout the exhibit triggers the response of birds into flight. Dogs bark setting off reactions and responses of other dogs at a distance. Bullfrogs cease to croak as visitors approach -- then resume vocalizing as they move away from the zone in which they are represented.

Wild Sanctuary's objective as an audio software designer is to create a media delivery system and design format mitigating the issues noted above, thus making a theatrical space that delivers for the visitor. This involves several carefully considered stages from early concept to final delivery. The first is integrating audio with the concept. The second is making the client aware that it is germane to implement acoustic balance in the space creating a virtual theater so all elements in the exhibit are weighted and crowd noise is controlled. The third objective is to overcome the redundancy issue. From observations of visitor response to what was being transmitted, constantly repeating programs projected from inefficient delivery systems tended to distort information and convey very little if any material of value to the listener while at the same time introducing a level of stress. [Note: In a 1989 Wild Sanctuary unpublished study done at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, CA, a push-a-button bird exhibit featuring the songs of five different species demonstrated that of 125 respondents of all ages, only one person was able to correctly recall all five in a blind playback test; 120 were unable to correctly identify a single song within 90 seconds of having utilized the panel. In fact, more than 50% of those queried claimed they pushed the buttons on the panel because they "wanted something to do."]

Without any useful visitor response information at hand, exhibit designers nonetheless traditionally address the problem by introducing sound, almost any sound. But they all too often discover to their continued dismay that, while the noise initially attracts attention, it delivers little in the way of information or engagement. The reward was a "Voice-of-God" monologue or bird chirp coming from marginal systems and that serves as a disappointing payoff.

In natural history exhibits no single element conveys a sense of place like well-executed sound in an acoustically controlled environment. Put a visitor in a dark room and play the sounds of a tropical rainforest with jaguars prowling or birds flying overhead through the space and it will evoke a sense of drama, place and dynamic that no single graphic or visual component can -- and for a fraction of most exhibit budgets.

The success of the theater of exhibit design is predicated on the balance between the five elements noted at the beginning of this article. Sound design is both a science and an art. When well-conceived soundscapes in museums are planned with respect to the architecture of the space, when they are biologically and culturally informed and designed with a view to educating the public and to delivering a compelling illusion -- one that is in harmony with the overall goals of the exhibit -- the visitor will finally be engaged in the realm of possible magic. eb

About the author: For the past 35 years, Dr. Krause has traveled the world capturing sounds of creatures and environments large and small. Having earned his Ph.D. in the field of bio-acoustics in 1981, he has worked at the research sites of Jane Goodall (Gombe, Tanzania), Birute Galdikas (Camp Leakey, Borneo), and Dian Fossey (Karisoke, Rwanda), as well as other sites from the Arctic to Antarctic, temperate and tropical regions in between, recording and evaluating the manner in which biophonies are established, maintained and what information they might carry. Recent research has indicated a link between biophonies and the origins of human music.

Aside from his work in bio-acoustics, Dr. Krause also has a wide music background in the fields of classical, folk and jazz. He worked his way through the University of Michigan playing guitar for Motown Records, replaced Pete Seeger in The Weavers (1963), introduced the synthesizer to the fields of pop music and film, contributing performances to over 135 major feature films including Apocalypse Now and Rosemary's Baby, and more than 250 recordings with major recording artists and acts. Through his company, Wild Sanctuary, he has recorded 58 environmental soundscape CDs and creates interactive environmental sound sculptures for museums, zoos, aquaria and other public spaces with patented new technologies.