TOWARDS
Auslaender MICRO
concept, graphic, technical and sound design
andrew garton / john power / bruce morrison
Auslaender
Micro is a virtual opera. It has been designed as an interface
through which each of its four acts can be explored. Various
forms of navigation are provided where the user encounters
numerous combinations of text, graphics and sound.
The
opera follows the afterlife of an Eastern European refugee.
A foreigner in every country, he passes away in a camp after
countless years of restless travel and ruthless persecution,
but in death freedom is as allusive as it was in life.
Auslaender
Micro is derived from Auslaender und Staatenlose, an ambitious
non-linear new media opera. Opera originated as a publicly
accessible form of music theatre in the early 17th Century.
It was defined as combining "the visual, aural and performing
arts into one elaborate unity". Multidisciplinary production
values are still inherent in today's opera. Auslaender und
Staatenlose explores this same formula, but it does so within
the context of new media, in particular the Web. Its "stage"
is defined by way of a two-way interaction with its audience
via the Web browser.
The
development for the visual component of Auslaender Micro
was influenced to the greatest extent by the collection
of photographs and identification documents from war time
Austria belonging to Andrew and his family, and by photos
taken from Andrew's travels through Austria and the Czech
Republic. Much of the imagery illuminates visual sequences
in the narrative while attempting to navigate a space around
the volumes carved out by the sonic presence of this screen
entity we call a virtual opera.
Ghosts
drift through deserted refugee camps, cross dreadful maps
of human conflict, sink into the grainy wind of electronic
media and communication, and dissipate in an ocean of swimming
souls. We hoped to maintain the density of the photographic
source material as well as projecting the figures into the
ethereal cavern we imagine in the words "on line". This
concern was addressed with the conventionally wide screen
and the reduced, monochromatic palette.
There
are 378 images, all images are 4 bit (have a possible maximum
of 16 colours each) except some images used in the shadow
effects and the splash screen. We used digital and scanned
photos, documents, pencil and ink drawings. We recommend
viewing the piece with your monitor set to at least 800
by 600 pixels, and colour depth higher than 8 bit (256 colours).
Early
on in the project it was decided that Auslaender Micro
would run on both major Web browsers, Microsoft's Internet
Explorer and Netscape's Communicator. We were eager to take
advantage of the relatively new Dynamic HTML (DHTML) technologies
found in both these products. This posed many problems as
the Document Object Model (DOM) employed by these products
differ considerably.
Another
decision was to produce Auslaender Micro as a truly
HTML project. To do so, it was decided that the site should
require no additional software (i.e. browser plugins and
other browser add-ons) to function. This meant utilizing
the primitive sound capabilities of both Explorer and Communicator,
despite differences in their implementation of sound.
Frames,
Cookies, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic
HTML were used to realise Auslaender Micro. The use
of these features in combination was a journey in itself
and has lead to a much greater appreciation of open standards
and the work of the World Wide Web Consortium.
Auslaender
Micro contains four looped, 11kHz 8 bit sound files. As
each of the four acts is loaded a sound underscores it,
maintaining audibility for the duration of the session.
The
challenge was to create sounds that could be heard in repetition
without irritating the users experience of the site. Each
sound was also required to be indicative of the content
of the act it was created for without distracting the user
from the visual components of the overall site. Given that
the final sound files had to be reasonably small in file
size it was necessary to consider the quality after re-sampling
from a high to a lower quality format.
The
introductory sound, a somber drone, was required to introduce
users to site as well as carry the theme of the 1st Act.
It was created by recording at close range a Chinese bell
as it was tapped with a mallet. This produced a variety
of harmonics which became audible when digitally enhanced.
Once the harmonics were isolated from other features of
the recorded cymbal it was pitch-shifted down by a 5th,
processed with slight reverb and resampled from 44Hz - 16bit
to 11Hz - 8 bit. This ensured that we had a full, haunting
sound at a reasonably acceptable file size.
A
second somber, though more meditative drone was required
for Act 2. The final sound is comprised of digeridoo, vocal
chants and digitally manipulated traffic noise. Each sound
was recorded separately, processed digitally, mixed together,
cropped and re-sampled.
A
harsh tangle of electronic sounds was sought to provide
the underscore for Act 3. We opted for a synthesized sound
that was created using freeware software on an MMX PC.
Loss
and despair were the overriding themes required of the sound
for the final Act. We used a recording Andrew had made of
a Toucan in Brazil. Significantly pitch-shifted and treated
with reverb the end result is more than haunting. It also
seemed fitting to use the Toucan, a diminishing species,
further echoing the grief encountered in Act 4.
Ausländer
Micro was conceived and created by Andrew Garton, John Power,
Bruce Morrison and Justina Curtis at Toy Satellite, Melbourne.
Auslaender
Micro was produced by Toy Satellite in association with
the Australian Film Commission and the Centre for Animation
and Interactive Media (Department of Visual Communication,
RMIT University). Auslaender und Staatenlose is a Project
in Residence at the Ars Electronica Centre, Austria.
We
would appreciate any feedback on the project. You can leave
a comment in the Auslaender
Forum or Guestbook
or email Auslaender@toysatellite.
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