Imagine - you’re in a closed, compact space. You navigate around it, slowly moving your feet as if you were exploring an unfamiliar area. As you approach the walls, you start hearing sounds. Every corner is different and a completely new experience is always a few steps away. You hear people chatting, kids laughing, trucks speeding. Kids again, a lot of kids. And then you land at a distinguished ceremony, right in time for the applause and ovation. You gently close your eyes as you approach the sound and feel as though you are a part of each story.
As familiar as it might sound, this story has nothing to do with the latest VR headset from Oculus or Samsung. It’s a story of The Wall - the iconic installation that was displayed in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this year. It was built by Mr. Sinan Bokesoy / sonicPlanet at the Sanatorium art gallery. SonicPlanet specializes in creating interactive sound installations which run on mobile platforms, both indoors and outdoors.
The unusual exhibition consisted of two parts. As you entered the building, the “Gardens” installation would activate. There were no grass or trees in there, only 2 isolated spaces, limited merely by walls and your own imagination. As you wandered around the space, different kinds of experiences would await you every few steps. On one side, it would be an aristocratic garden party behind a one side wall. On another, a refugee camp with trucks and kids playing around. Such drastically different experiences, just a short distance away.
You would proceed down the stairs to the second part of the exhibition - The Proximity. There, you suddenly land in a war zone from 2,000 years ago, surrounded from every angle by the fight and tears as the soldiers try to bring down an imaginary wall. As you approached to the wall, the experience would get more and more intense. If you closed your eyes, you could feel completely immersed in the middle of it, with no way out. However, on the other side of the wall inside the exhibition space, you would land in a post-nuclear zone, filled with emptiness. What once was a lively, vibrant area would now be gone for good.
The Wall installation used Estimote iOS SDK with hidden Proximity Beacons placed around the spaces, each providing a completely different 3D sound experience. The exact sound to be played would be determined by the distance from the beacon as well as the device’s position. Visitors would grab an iPhone or iPad, download the SonicPlanet iOS app and put on the earphones to get started. As they proceeded around the exhibition, new soundscapes would await.
Although the installation is complete and finished, Mr Bokesoy plans to display it in several more venues later this year. We’ll update this article once we have some more precise dates. For more information on SonicPlanet and their projects, be sure to follow them at https://www.sonicplanet.com/& http://www.sanatorium.com.tr/en
Piotr Małek, Community Manager at Estimote