Wednesday November 21, 2018 12:00pm - 12:25pm, Soundings Theatre

The DX Lab is the State Library of NSW’s innovation lab that builds and supports new ways of design thinking, experimentation and research with technology. The DX Lab firmly believes that collaboration is one of the best ways to explore experimental ideas .Therefore, it has been important for us to provide opportunities for creative technologists to work with the DX Lab through a few different grant opportunities, to explore the Library’s collections and data and to make them available in new experiences. There have been a number of Creative Technologists offered grants including Tim Sherratt, Chris Mc Dowell, Adam Hinshaw with Elisa Lee, Mike Daly and Thomas Wing-Evans.

80Hz, a project by DX Lab Fellow Thomas Wing-Evans is one example of how experimental research can cross over into a major experience situated on the forecourt of the Library, inviting visitors to hear the sounds of the collection in a playful data sonification and light experience. 80Hz refocusses data science processes commonly used in the fields of astronomy and oceanography onto the library’s catalogue of paintings, turning them into musical compositions.

Occupying a square adjacent to the heritage-listed Mitchell Library the project takes on a unique physical form, part architectural pavilion, part interactive sculpture. During the day its articulated facades reflect the colours of the trees and buildings that surround them, creating a cocoon from which to momentarily escape the city. Inside, visitors are able to select portraits from the catalogue and listen to them as soundscapes that reflect their historic and compositional information. By night 80Hz is transformed, becoming a beacon of light and sound and reactivating the unused square for new audiences. Fundamentally, this project abstracts traditional notions of the library as an archive of information and repositions it as a creator of new ideas that draw from the past and look to the future.

In this presentation Paula Bray and Thomas Wing-Evans will discuss how this collaboration came about, what some of the challenges have been, both technical and practical and how the Library visitors have reacted to this experimental sound sculpture situated at the front entrance to the Library.