Mountain Ghosts is a sound art installation at the University of Colorado which was on exhibit throughout their campus in Colorado Springs in the fall of 2011. This installation used Roundware to distribute a site-specific musical composition throughout campus as well as collect participant commentary to mix with the music.

Several hundred audio ghosts now populate this beautiful landscape.

Scapes is a sound installation at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA which augments the physical landscape of the park with a location-sensitive layer of audio.  This audio layer contains a mixture of instrumental music and spoken voices – contributed by participants – both of which are influenced by the participant’s location within the sculpture park.  As such, the participant’s body becomes the primary mode of interaction with this project; as they move through the park, they control how their individual audioscape unfolds by shifting the instrumental music and “running into” audio left by other participants. Museum visitors will use a handheld wireless device and headphones with which they can listen to audio as well as make their own recordings which will be immediately assimilated into the piece for everyone to hear.

More details…

Ocean Voices is a collaboration between sound artist Halsey Burgund and marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols designed to collect spoken voice recordings from people around the world responding to a few personal questions about the ocean, including:

• How does the ocean affect you on a daily basis?
• Describe a world without oceans.
• What does it feel like to be in the ocean?

The voice collection process was tackled using Roundware in addition to more traditional methods, such as in-person interviews.  Roundware is used on oceanvoices.org as well as in the OV iOS and Android apps.

Roundware was vital to OV given that it allowed for the collection of voices on a global scale with a very small budget.  Building the apps and the website enabled anyone on the planet with internet access to contribute their comments about the ocean.  The ocean is the largest feature on this planet, effecting every human being, so giving everyone the opportunity to participate was a key philosophy behind Ocean Voices.

Ocean Voices has both artistic and conservation goals.

• to bring together a global community to emphasize how ocean conservation is a global issue
• to focus on the individual and the individual’s thoughts about the ocean, making it very personal and therefore more impactful
• to bring together the creative/musical/artistic world with the environmental world, thereby broadening the audience and increasing accessibility
• to actively solicit grassroots participation from a wide variety of geographic and demographic groups and encourage cross-pollination of ideas

This is where it all started.  Yes, Roundware was named after the ROUND installation.  And the ROUND installation was named after both King Arthur and Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

ROUND, on exhibit in 2008, was the first participatory audio installation Halsey Burgund ever created in a museum. It was commissioned by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and used pre-smartphone mobile networked devices to allow museum visitors to leave audio comments about the museum’s artworks as well as hear those of other museum visitors, artists and curators. The voices were combined with music into individualized audio experiences intended to democratize opinions about art.

Way back in 2007 when ROUND was conceived, the technological platform to accomplish this piece was not in place, so Roundware was born.  It has come a long way from these beginnings, but the philosophy of collecting opinions and experiences from people and re-distributing them is still at the core of the Roundware project.

ROUND interface on mobile device

Pause. Play. was an audio guide that was an educational extension of the ROUND installation at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.  It used Roundware to create a participatory experience for museum visitors quite different from a typical audio tour.