Sonic archives
Interactive media
Design brief:
To develop an audio-visual interactive installation that uses sound as a medium to archive and critique our relationship with technology.
Process:
The design approach is informed by speculative fiction, field research, hacking, coding, and iterative prototyping, with inquiry-led exploration guiding the making process. Speculative narratives are employed as a worldbuilding tool to extrapolate and exaggerate existing technological trajectories while remaining grounded in present realities.
The artefact integrates sensor-based systems and generative audiovisual processes to enable dynamic, responsive behavior that evolves through continuous refinement. A key objective of the brief is to design interactions that feel unfamiliar and subtly alienating, using moments of discomfort and wonder to prompt audiences to pause, question, and re-evaluate their relationship with technology.
SPECULATIVE FICTION Listening Beyond the Human
In the year 2074, a team of archaeologists led by Dr. Phrom Lawai makes a groundbreaking discovery in the heart of the Meghalaya. Buried beneath layers of sediment and decayed vegetation, hidden away from modern civilization, lies an ancient vault, untouched for decades. Within its darkened chambers stands a monolithic quartz structure, smooth yet weathered, as if it had been waiting for centuries to be found. At first, it appears to be nothing more than a geological anomaly, until the researchers step closer. The monolith resonates, emitting a low, pulsing hum that seems to breathe through the vault itself. Upon further analysis, they uncover its true nature: a Quartz Memory Crystal, storing over 360 terabytes of sound, an entire archive of lost sonic histories. This is not merely a relic. It is a Sonic Archive, a time capsule containing not words, not images, but the pure, unfiltered memory of sound, an auditory history of a vanished world.
As the archaeologists investigate further, they make an even more astonishing discovery. The monolith is not an isolated artifact. It is connected to something far greater. A vast underground fungal network stretching across 50 kilometers, weaving through the remains of what was once a thriving forest ecosystem. Analysis of the fungal strands reveals an unsettling truth: the network was once symbiotically linked to trees that had disappeared over 60 years ago, their roots still faintly echoing within the mycelium. Somehow, this organic, living system had been storing sound, documenting the rise and fall of an entire ecosystem. The Sonic Archive is not human-made. It is a collaboration between nature and technology, an emergent intelligence where fungi, trees, and crystal have conspired to preserve what humanity forgot.
The sonic artifact resists human control. It had no buttons, no documentation on how to use it or any conventional means of interaction. It does not conform to the logic of human technology. Instead, it responds to touch, as if it is aware of those who engage with it. Each touch awakens new sounds, not as a simple playback, but as an interactive response, an echo of the past that unfolds in real-time. The artifact is not just a passive storage device, it is a living memory, one that shifts and reshapes itself based on those who listen. And there is one more mystery. Alongside the sounds, the artifact projects strange, abstract visuals,pulsing waves, unfamiliar glyphs, spectral forms that hint at a language yet to be deciphered.
