Reconfiguring the Landscape

Natasha Barrett

Reconfiguring the Landscape was a Norwegian artistic research project hosted at the Norwegian Academy for Music and funded by the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (DIKU). The project investigated how 3-D electroacoustic composition and sound-art can evoke and provoke a new awareness of our outdoor environment. The work addressed both urban and natural settings. The project was led by Natasha Barrett and included an international lineup of composers, technologists and scientists who contributed in different ways. The project startup was in November 2019, just a few months before COVID impacted all activities. From 2020-2021 the project members worked independently. In 2022 group activities resumed. Research work formally ended in the beginning of 2023, and public dissemination and documentation concluded in November 2023.

Other Experiments

Throughout the project, numerous experiments were conducted. Some entailed preliminary tests that laid the groundwork for larger modules of work, while others, although interesting, ultimately proved to be beyond the scope of the project timeframe.

Each of the links contain documentation as sound, video and text.

Recording and Sound Landscape Developments: Outdoor nature recordings, edited, processed and rendered in binaural and interactive 360 on YouTube.

These tests were a forerunner to the methods applied by Natasha Barrett in the sound installations.

Urban Soundscape Enhancement.

This work was a forerunner to the Subliminal Throwback installation but also contained some dead ends and highlighted the need to thoroughly consider the existing use of the chosen installation location.

Experiments with 3D LiDAR scans and 3D sound at the Barcode district, Oslo (2022/23).

What happens to our understanding of an urban landscape when 3D images and 3D sound are combined and experienced off-site?

The Acoustic Atlas

The Acoustic Atlas was a research project led by Dr. Cobi van Tonder at the University of York, UK. It is an interactive 360 degree sound map documenting acoustic spaces from around the world. This wonderful project can be explored online here: https://www.acousticatlas.de/

Natasha was asked to contribute her work with 3D outdoor impulse responses and also provided an abridged version of Presence/Nærvær installation for the project’s album, which can be heard here: https://www.acousticatlas.de/echoesalbum

Landscape Sonification

Refer to the description of Sansing i Strandsona / Remote Sensing on the Beach.

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Natasha Barrett - Reconfiguring the Landscape - 2024