Whispering Gardens / Uwe Rieger (DE), Yinan Liu (NZ), Hua Yang (CN)/Photo: tom mesic

Whispering Gardens

Uwe Rieger (DE), Yinan Liu (NZ), Hua Yang (CN)

Whispering Gardens invites the audience to traverse through imaginary landscapes guided by spatial audio narratives and soundscapes. Created by an AI system, the storylines merge classic principles of garden architecture with contemporary environmental degradation and extrapolated fairy tales.

At the heart of the installation sits a robotic arm which is equipped with an ultrasonic speaker able to target individual visitors with a narrow beam of sound. While multiple people may occupy the site simultaneously, the scenes reveal themselves only to a few at a time. Those within the beam of sound find themselves immersed in imaginary gardens and illusory landscapes, guided by the whispering voice of an invisible narrator.

The Whispering Gardens project is part of ongoing research by the arc/sec lab and the DIV Lab, which aim to discover new principles for the design, construction and interaction with cyber-physical environments.

Bios

  • Photo: Hua Yang

    Hua Yang

    CN

    Hua Yang is the Professor, Executive Director of Design Interaction Visual Lab (DIV Lab) School of Creativity and art, ShanghaiTech University. Her main research interests include information design, interaction design and new media art. Her art works have been shown in exhibitions home and abroad, and have won several international awards in the field of digital media.

  • Photo: Uwe Rieger

    Uwe Rieger

    DE

    Uwe Rieger is an Associate Professor for Design and Design Technology at the University of Auckland, where he has established the arc/sec Lab for Cyber-Physical Architecture and Interactive Systems. His work as an architect and researcher aims to connect the intangible digital world with multi-sensory qualities of physical constructions and spaces.

  • Photo: Yinan Liu

    Yinan Liu – arc/sec Lab

    NZ

    Yinan Liu is a digital artist and programmer. She has completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Auckland. Yinan is a Research Associate at the arc/sec Lab, while also teaching at various institutions, including the University of Auckland, ShanghaiTech University, and the TU Graz. Her research focuses on creative AI and responsive environments, employing architectural scale prototypes and performances.

Credits

arc/sec Lab: Uwe Rieger (DE/NZ) & Yinan Liu (NZ), University of Auckland
DIV Lab: Hua Yang (CN), ShanghaiTech University

Support: Hongsheng Gao (CN), Ziqiang Huang (CN), ShanghaiTech University

The project is supported by the University of Auckland and ShanghaiTech University.