TechArtICT: Whispering Woodlands

Whispering Woodlands was an outdoor installation created by TechArtICT. It was installed at Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas from November 2023 through January 2024. The work featured 24 independently controlled sets of speakers and LEDs, all synchronized to create an immersive sound and lightscape. Using eclectic audio ranging from thunder and rain to spaceships and human chants, Whispering Woodlands transformed Exploration Place’s picnic area into a surreal world of beauty, wonder, and awe.

Whispering Woodlands was widely publicized, including this video from Exploration Place:

Videographer Ian Blume also produced an in-depth piece on the work, touching on how the work was created and how TechArtICT functions as a group:

Centered in the installation, an interactive “ghost tree” listened to the sounds participants made into a large microphone. It repeated them back, altered with strange, startling and sometimes humorous effects. The ghost tree is now a permanent outdoor installation at Exploration Place.

Whispering Woodlands featured Wichita artists Ernie Kind, Tom McGuire, Pankaja Withanachchi, Meghan Miller and me. My contributions included building the network and the software that coordinated the sounds and lights. I also built the system that sent the sounds in realtime through the network and I wrote all the software that created the effects in the “ghost tree.” Finally, I directed the installation and served as liaison between Exploration Place and TechArtICT.

Similar Posts

  • SoundScratch

    SoundScratch is a set of extensions I wrote to manipulate audio in a children’s programming language called Scratch. The environment emphasizes the expressive capabilities of sound through the act of creation and design.

  • Touch #2

    Touch #2 is a playful virtual environment and an interactive, musical instrument. Viewers become participants through play. The piece installs on any flat wall with a high ceiling. Sensors mount on top of the wall to detect multitouch. A virtual environment of suns, stars and planets projects onto the wall. Gravity, inertia, friction, and wind…

  • Ballet Wichita: Innovations

    As part of the Ballet Wichita’s Innovations performance April 2024 I teamed up with Wichita State University’s Shocker Studios to track a dancer live, reinterpreting their motions on a stage-sized display behind them. Wichita State University’s Fairmount String Trio accompanied the dance, performing Dohnányi’s Serenade. To track the dancer we used 3 Vive 3.0 trackers…

  • Digital Puppetry

    I worked with a team of colleagues, community members, and urban youth. Our intention was to help the youth learn in a playful environment, find personal self-expression, and have their voices heard by communities in Boston. To do this, we adapted commercially available technology to provide a unique medium: digital puppetry.

  • Ghost in the Machine

    Originally conceived in 2008, Ghost in the Machine (GITM) consists of a webcam and display which mixes and crossfades events in realtime with motion-activated video it has recorded previously. It continually shifts between 3 states: individual, community, and the world. GITM has been shown in many venues and contexts.