Lydspor
Lydspor (Sonic Traces), is a site-specific sonic experience that allows people to feel and sense narrative fragments of the past, interwoven with the present-day experience of human and nonhuman bodies co-existing in the city of Elsinore.
The Lydspor experience uses sonic technologies and soundscapes to augment the existing space of the city with forgotten sounds and stories from the 1500s-1600s, and it consists of three parts. Two physical installations; one at the harbour and the other at the City Museum of Elsinore, and one app-based sound walk on the street Hestemøllestræde, leading up from the harbour to where the museum is located.
The installation at the harbour (Sanden, meaning the Sand) uses transducers embedded in a physical sculpture to play a soundscape that can be listened to and felt as vibrations through the body when standing in or sitting on the installation.
Through the felt and heard soundscape, it tells the story of the land and the diaspora community emerging there through a settlement that existed for a hundred years before it was demolished in the war against Sweden in 1658.
The installation at the museum (Karmeliterhuset – named after the house in which the museum is currently placed) also uses transducers and embodied listening to convey both the human and more-than-human sounds that could have been heard in the house 500 years ago.
Finally, the soundwalk along Hestemøllestræde uses location-aware technology and a custom-designed app to introduce visitors to historical human and nonhuman actors and stories related to this particular street, unfolding different perspectives of and frictions between the belief in magic, science, and the church during the 1500s-1600s.
DATE
The project was exhibited/tested in May and July 2022 in Elsinore.
COLLABORATION
Lydspor was developed in a project collaboration between the AIR Lab, CATCH – Centre for Art,
Design and Technology in Elsinore, the Municipality of Elsinore, and the City Museum of Elsinore.
The project was generously supported by WS Audiology.
PROJECT MEMBERS
[CATCH, Elsinore] – Majken Overgaard.
[City Museum, Elsinore] – Line Brun Stallknecht.
[Municipality of Elsinore] – Laura Albeck Ibsen.
[AIR Lab, IT University of Copenhagen] – Jonas Fritsch, Halfdan Hauch Jensen, Vasiliki Tsaknaki,
Stina Hasse Jørgensen, Karin Ryding, Thomas Kaufmanas.
[While Loops Interactive] – Johan Gelinder.
[Mastermind Production] – Finn Markwardt.
[Playwrite] – Sophie Bredal Zinckernagel.
[Visual designer] – Ada Ada Ada.
[Actors] – Lue Støvlebæk, Mette Kjeldgaard Jensen, Ene Øster Bendtsen, Michelle Bjørn-Andersen,
Jens Zacho Böye.
[Video documentation, IT University of Copenhagen] – Rina de Place Bjørn.
REFERENCES/LINKS
Ryding, K. Tsaknaki, V., Jørgensen, Jørgensen, S. M. H. and Fritsch J. (2023). LYDSPOR: AN URBAN SOUND
EXPERIENCE WEAVING TOGETHER PAST AND PRESENT THROUGH VIBRATING BODIES. In Proceedings of the 2023
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery,
New York, NY, USA, Article 184, 1–16. [LINK] [PREPRINT]
ITU PRESS: “Digital genskabelse af lydbilledet fra 1600-tallets Helsingør“
More about the project (in danish): [LINK]
PHOTOS
Kasper Christiansen.