We all hear selectively, meaning we focus in on certain sounds and out of others. Think of the last time you went on a walk with a friend. You were probably only actively listening to what was right in front of you, perhaps, the person you were talking to, and were probably not listening too closely to other conversations taking place or the overall sound of the space. This is where Deep Listening comes in. It’s an idea pioneered in the 1970s by a composer named Pauline Oliveros, in her words, it’s “a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible, to hear no matter what you are doing.” Deep Listening is an act of tuning in to one’s environment by intentionally listening to surrounding sounds. It’s so profound, there’s even a Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute! It elaborates on this practice further:

“Deep Listening, as developed by Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening.  The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth.”

What we choose to listen to is indeed personal, but Deep Listening allows us to connect to where we are in the moment we’re in, and in a year so uncertain, finding new means to connect can give us all an extra anchor.

Under normal circumstances, we’d ask you to plug in those earphones and find some solace in the stories we’re lucky enough to tell and the experiences we work so hard to create, but this time, we challenge you to go outside (stay six feet away from others, of course) and listen closely. Meditate on what you hear! We’ll leave you with this advice from Pauline herself:

“The key to multi-level existence is Deep Listening – listening in as many ways as possible to everything that can possibly be heard all of the time. Deep Listening is exploring the relationships among any and all sounds whether natural or technological, intended or unintended, real, remembered or imaginary. Thought is included. Deep Listening includes all sounds expanding the boundaries of perception.”

Excerpt from “Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice)” by Pauline Oliveros. SoundArtArchive, December 1999.

The post How To “Deep Listen” appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

This month we’re especially excited about Pompeii, a new exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris! 

The exhibit includes high definition AR and VR featuring 360° projections and 3D reconstructions of streets and homes. Rounding out the experience is Acoustiguide’s rich audio guide, which delves deep into Pompeiian life. 

Laetitia Portal, the Managing Director of the French office, said “…One of the most exciting challenges of this immersive exhibition is to make the day-to-day life of Pompeii live from morning to evening with the recreation of the eruption and all the spectacular effects. There are so many great experiential moments for adults, kids and visually impaired visitors.”

For the audio guide, Portal and her team interviewed eight different experts, including volcanologists, film directors, and scenographers, who discussed objects and discoveries from the latest excavations as well as behind-the-scenes insights into the process of creating a virtual world. Acoustiguide reconstructed what Pompeii sounded like using ambient sounds and historically accurate music – including an ancient Roman flute called a tibia.

The exhibit and its audio guide have been praised in several French publications including Le Parisien, Télérama, and Le Figaro.

While we eagerly await the moment when our cherished institutions re-open, right now, anyone across the globe can escape to the Grand Palais and learn about Pompeii – and that’s something to be excited about.

For more information, visit here:
https://www.grandpalais.fr/fr/expo-pompei-chez-vous

The post Travel Back in Time (safely at home, of course) <br/>with Acoustiguide Paris! appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

Here are a few recent highlights, from funny, to humbling, to freaky!

1. From Degas at the Opéra at the National Gallery of Art
   • In Degas’ day, a watering can was left in the dance studios to wash down the dusty floors!
   • Did you know the original Little Dancer Aged Fourteen has ACTUAL human hair??
2. From the new permanent collection at the Seattle Art Museum Asian Art Museum
   • Actor Hudson Yang suggests that making a television show isn’t so different from making a work of art like this one — and this was part of a manuscript that took 15 years to make way back in the 1500s.
3. From K-9 Courage at National September 11 Memorial & Museum
   • Did you know that dogs have a greater filtering system in their noses than humans? It’s why they smell *everything*. More importantly, it may be the reason so many of them stayed free of respiratory diseases during the cleanup of the World Trade Center site.
4. From “Stories of Daily Life” at the Jewish Museum
   • The Jewish Museum’s permanent collection contains many tzedakah boxes (or charity boxes), but one particularly charming one was discovered floating in the East River! Listen to the stop here!
5. From Flesh & Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum at the Kimbell Art Museum
   • Famed Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni reportedly had a pathological fear of women! Dr. Babette Bohn, Professor of Art History at the College of Fine Arts at TCU, says this may explain Reni’s less-than-believable paintings of nude women, like ATALANTA AND HIPPOMENES, a stop on this tour. And she offers a story about taboo laundry. One day, Reni’s basket of laundry arrived at his studio… and, according to Bohn: “To Reni’s horror, they discovered a woman’s blouse mixed in with the laundry. And Reni insisted that everything needed to be rewashed in pure water, and he never sent the laundry out again.”
6. Located on the historic Angels Quartz Mine in Calaveras County, CA,  Angels Camp Museum tells the story of California’s original ’49ers – those who migrated to the West Coast (in 1849) to take part in the Gold Rush—and the patent technology that’s still used today! For example… take a look at this beauty:
   • That’s the Pelton wheel, invented by—you guessed it– Lester A. Pelton 130 years ago or so. Funny fact: At the time, the standard wheel was named the hurdy-gurdy. (Who knew?) Pelton’s new design was so efficient that it’s still being used today, often to generate hydroelectric power. Ciao, hurdy-gurdy!

You can hear the clips here. The stories we get to tell are always a privilege. We have a lot in store in the months ahead and look forward to sharing more here!

The post A Dancing Watering Can, an East River Treasure, and a Banned Blouse appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

Caption: From left to right, artists Alex and Maira Kalman, David Barbosa & Lee Varino from Acoustiguide, and Nora Rodriguez at Russ and Daughters. Mural designed by Maira Kalman.

This story begins about 18 months ago when our long-time creative partner, the Jewish Museum, told us they were “moving away from audio tours.” The museum wanted to rethink how they talked about their collection while redefining their mobile visitor experience. 

We said…

After all, at Acoustiguide, we’re all about creating experiences. Not ‘tours’ or ‘guides.’ Experiences.

A little background…in January 2018, the Jewish Museum debuted their newly installed permanent collection galleries. They had radically re-conceived their collection to not only honor their identity as a Jewish museum with a one-of-a-kind collection, but also their identity as an art institution. They organized their permanent collection into six galleries with objects spanning over 4,000 years and encompassing myriad subjects and mediums – all connected to Jewish tradition, ritual, and culture.

The museum designed and implemented a new mobile platform (by Code and Theory) and we collaborated to create compelling content that showcased their distinct voice and core missions. The approach was nimbler, more flexible – with shorter thematic experiences and pithy stories that conveyed poignancy, humor, and a decidedly un-fussy tone of voice. Forget in-depth interviews; we opted for tighter conversations. Forget formal narrators; when we even decided we even needed to have them at all, we tapped museum staff as guides. Forget formally produced soundtracks; we featured the sound of the galleries from hours of on-location recordings embellished with thematically-inspired music. 

Out of this came Artists’ Voices, Director’s Highlights, Jewish Rituals, Migrations, Family, Verbal Descriptions, and others. These modules celebrated personal reactions from the Museum’s Director, Claudia Gould, artists, rabbis, writers, academics, community leaders, and even…fifth-grade students.

The result is a vibrant and diverse collection of voices speaking in authentic, heartfelt ways about a broad array of objects and art works. But the story doesn’t end here. We are already at work on new projects that will showcase the voices, perspectives, and insights that amplify the Museum’s unique perspective and mission. 

A special thanks to our collaborators at the Museum, most especially Nora Rodriguez, the Museum’s Interpretive Media Producer, without whom none of this would have been possible.

The post A Storied Collection Gets A New Voice appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

The post Summer is Here! Time to Take Stock of 2019 appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

On an unseasonably warm winter’s day, we visited the Tocal Homestead in Paterson, Australia, a rural property about three hours northeast of Sydney, to install our Opus+ players. This is their fourth iteration of Acoustiguide hardware; starting with Inform in 2002, then to exSite, Opusand now, Opus+.

Visitors to the site will see aboriginal grinding grooves, experience the Homestead’s original buildings and even encounter pigs who are direct descendants of those first farmed there! The tour offers the narrative history of the place, beginning with the original inhabitants — the Gringai clan of the Wonnarua people, which is where the name Tocal itself originates — through to today.

Visitors will hear how Tocal has been a center for innovation since the early 19th century, led by forward-thinking farmers. In 1832, James Webber tested crops new to the region, most notably grapes for wine-making — he was a pioneer in what’s now recognized as one of the best wine regions of Australia; later, Charles Reynolds established one of the greatest cattle and horse stud farms in Australia, and Charles Boyd Alexander brought mechanization and technology to Tocal. Today – through Tocal College — the area is at the forefront of agricultural education and environmental management.

Like many of our clients, Tocal Homestead wanted a hybrid tour solution. In addition to Opus+, we developed an iOS and Android GPS-enabled app which provides easy navigation around the property and showcases some revealing but previously archived images. For those unable to travel to Paterson, the app also allows access to virtual visitors from around the world who want to gain insight into early colonial farming practices in Australia.

Check out the app by downloading it from the iTunes or GooglePlay stores!

The post Spotlight Australia: The Tocal Homestead appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

Accessibility is a key priority for museums.  But in Germany, it means more than wheelchair ramps, elevators, video guides in sign language, and audio descriptive tours.  In Germany, content in what’s called “Leichte Sprache” (Easy Language) is a fundamental pillar of the accessibility mission. Never heard of it? It’s a special form of standard German that follows specific rules of grammar, vocabulary, layout, and structure. The goal is to enable people with cognitive disabilities or a limited knowledge of German to access information and, by law, many authorities are required to have documents and other content available in Leichte Sprache.

Take a look at this example:

Original: 
“Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany, as well as one of its 16 constituent states. It has a steadily growing population of approximately 3.7 million. Berlin is the second most populous city proper in the European Union behind London and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union.” (Wikipedia)

Translation in Leichte Sprache:
Berlin is the capital of Germany.
Berlin is the largest city in Germany.
Almost 4 million people are living in Berlin.
Many people are moving to Berlin.
So the number of people living in Berlin is growing.
Berlin is the second largest city in the European Union.
Only London is larger.

Writing Leichte Sprache can be challenging because of the decisions you have to make about prioritizing information to get to the essence of the meaning.  And, as you can see from the example above, there are other attendant challenges:

• You need more words than in standard German and thus more space and time to convey the information.
• Audio guides in Leichte Sprache are narrated at a much slower pace than in standard German to allow the target audience to understand and process the information.
• Many terms have to be explained and the vocabulary is repeated to support comprehension.
• You have to trim a lot from the original texts if you’re anticipating a finished product that does not exhaust your visitors with an overwhelming supply of endless audio commentaries.

It goes without saying that cutting information often involves many, sometimes very passionate discussions, because – understandably – details are very dear to the client.

In 2017, Acoustiguide Germany translated the audio guide for the SKD, Dresden State Art Collection’s Royal Castle, into Leichte Sprache. The result was a total of 235 tracks and more than nine hours of audio content for the different exhibition spaces in the New and Historic Green Vault, Coin Cabinet, Turkish Chamber and Hall of the Giants.

Here are some examples from that project. Even if you can’t read and comprehend German, you can detect the simplicity and pacing of the sentences.

55: Straußen-Ei-Pokale

Sprecher:
Die Menschen benutzten diese Vogel-Figuren
im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert bei Trink-Gelagen.
Das waren fröhliche Treffen, bei denen sehr viel getrunken wurde.
Können Sie sich vorstellen, aus solch einem Gefäß zu trinken?
Das ist sehr schwierig,
weil der Vogel-Hals sehr lang und dünn ist.
Und die Flügel der Vögel bewegten sich beim Trinken.
Die Menschen dieser Zeit hatten mit den Figuren viel Spaß.

73: Obeliscus-Augustalis

Sprecherin:
Was erzählt Ihnen dieses Kunst-Werk?
Im Mittelpunkt steht das Email-Porträt von August dem Starken.
Es zeigt ihn als Herrscher.
Das erkennen Sie zum Beispiel an der polnisch-litauischen Krone
und dem roten Kurhut über dem Portrait.

Nur wenige Fürsten durften den Kurhut tragen
In der Zeit Augusts des Starken
gab es neun Kurfürsten im Deutschen Reich.

Der Hut war das Zeichen ihrer Macht.

The Acoustiguide Germany team has been specially trained to write in Leichte Sprache by capito Berlin, one of our creative partners. We are eager to provide our expertise to cultural sites and to ensure that accessibility-for-all remains a priority.

To learn more about Leichte Sprache, follow these links:

• Leichte Sprache  A website of a network lobbying for Leichte Sprache and that provides resources
• Hurraki  A dictionary providing some translations

The post Expanding Accessibility: Germany Leads the Way with Easy Language appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

Are you still thinking about the Royal Wedding?  Reading tweets about Meghan Markle’s beagle, perhaps?  If you’re a stickler for details or fashion, perhaps you’ve been wondering why Meghan Markle didn’t match her wedding-day Cartier bracelet and Cartier earrings with a Cartier tiara from the Royal Collection Trust.

We have answers!

On view now at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is Cartier: The Exhibition, which features a stunning collection of gems and jewels, including many of the Queen of England’s exquisite pieces. This includes Queen Elizabeth II’s Cartier Halo tiara—the one she loaned to the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, for her wedding day.

With the Halo tiara promised for the exhibition, it was unavailable for the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex. Naturally, the Queen being the queen, she has several tiaras in her collection, and loaned Ms. Markle Queen Mary’s bandeau tiara.

A few other tantalizing Cartier facts for your next dinner party conversation:

• In the early 1900s, pearls were the most precious gems in the world.
• Cartier invented the modern wristwatch to help his friend, the pioneering aviator, Alberto Santos-Dumont.
• It could take a year to create one of Cartier’s famous ‘mystery’ clocks.
• 

Find out more about the exhibition here.

If you cannot get to Canberra before July 22^nd, you can download our app here (iOS or Android), which includes tours for adults and children, and is available in English and Mandarin.

The post The Mystery of the Duchess of Sussex appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

The project is part of the museum’s bicentenary celebrations; two hundred years is a long time to stay relevant and the Fitzwilliam is a notable case of a museum being able to evolve with the changing perceptions of the function of museums and galleries. Key to this development is their ability to understand and respond to visitor needs.

Acoustiguide were asked to produce a digital guide to help visitors navigate and access the Fitzwilliam’s collection. The app uses interactive maps to locate certain objects within the galleries. Visitors can either download the app straight to their phones or hire one of the on-site devices.

The museum holds 100 smart technology devices and 10 of Acoustiguide’s brand new proprietary Opus+ devices.

Opus+ is the next generation of our Opus series and has evolved to take advantage of improved technologies in the industry. The Fitzwilliam chose the Opus+ for their audio descriptive content because of its accessible and uncomplicated delivery.

All devices are supported by our brand new wireless charging facilities. The inductive charging rack has no physical connectors, to give a reliable charging process and reduced scope for damage. This translates to an easier delivery of the guide and a more efficient charging solution.

As part of the bicentennial celebrations, there will be a selection of exciting temporary exhibitions throughout the year. The first of these is Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt, which runs until 22 May. This exhibition explores the beliefs and working practices behind the Fitzwilliam’s remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins and reveals new information on how they were made. A live conservation area within the exhibition provides visitors with a unique insight into the science behind conserving and examining the objects.

An interpretative tour is available for the exhibition within the digital guide. In addition, we have prepared an audio-descriptive tour, which is available on our Opus+ devices.

The second major exhibition for 2016, COLOUR, celebrates the Fitzwilliam’s bicentenary with a stunning display of 150 of some of the finest illuminated manuscripts in the world. The exhibition showcases advanced cutting-edge research from the MINIARE project undertaken by the Fitzwilliam’s curators. Running from 30 July – 30 December 2016; a main tour and VI tour of the exhibition will again be available for visitors to make the most of their experience.

Working closely with The Fitzwilliam Museum on their digital guide has given us a fantastic insight into changing visitor needs. The app will be a welcome and engaging addition to their visitor experience and if you are ever in Cambridge, it is well worth experiencing this informative and enjoyable guide.

We shall be exploring the challenges and successes of this exciting project in more depth at this year’s Museums and Heritage Show. Our talk 21^st Century interpretation in a 19^th Century Museum takes place in the New Technology theatre on Thursday 19^th May. Come and meet us… We’ll be waiting for you!

The post Acoustiguide develops digital guide for Fitzwilliam’s bicentenary celebrations appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.

The National Gallery of Australia has fully embraced the use of this technology offering their visitors a choice of three tours – Adult’s audio tour, Children’s audio tour, and AUSLAN (sign interpreted and subtitled) tour.  Interesting and inspiring content with clear voices and great production elements, accompanied by high resolution images and transcript enable the visitor to deeply explore the works and life of Tom Roberts.

Positive visitor’s comments are plentiful – just to share a couple…

Isla (8) says: It was very informative and interesting.  From the first word I wanted to hear more.

And Kris says:  The Audio was wonderful – clear diction – easy to hear and understand.  Interestingly told with some subtle and suitable sounds to compliment the presentation.  The audio was easy to use – good setting out.  I also tried the children’s audio – wonderful with sounds and children’s voices clearly audible.  Thank you.

Katie Russell – Head of Learning and Access explains why the NGA chose Acoustiguide to supply their Acoustiguide Mobile App and Smart Solutions for Tom Roberts: “The NGA was keen to adopt an audio tour system that enhanced our visitors’ experience of exhibitions and collections. Acoustiguide Smart Solutions has delivered a user-friendly platform for our three tours of the Tom Roberts exhibition with the capacity for visitors to zoom in to view details on the images that are described in the audio commentary. The public response has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re very much looking forward to utilising Smart Solutions to provide interpretation of the NGA’s art collections in the near future.”

This extraordinary exhibition runs until March 28, so be sure to visit and enjoy the art; and the tours…

The post Smart Solutions for Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) appeared first on Acoustiguide – Audio Tours, Guides and Experiences.