In Craving the two artists aurally stage a text inspired by the late Sarah Kane's play Crave in public space. It unfolds while members of the audience individually wander a high-rise area, wearing headphones and a mobile computing device.

As the recipient's position is determined via GPS and his head- and body movements are tracked through a magnetometer, he is able to physically navigate through the binaural soundscape surrounding him. The path the listeners chose is in no way - auditory or visually - predetermined, thereby allowing the audience to let themselves be guided by aspects of the place itself such as its architecture while experiencing the production.

The text used in Craving draws on Crave, a play by British dramatist Sarah Kane (1971 - 1999). In it, four sparsely drawn characters weave a tapestry made up of quotations and fragments, the cloth of which are their individual traumas, loves, grieves and resignations. It is in repetition and the final defeat of communication of internal landscapes that we come full circle to the urbane Wüste (the urban desert) between the towers of the Donaustadt.

As environmental influences such as weather or social interaction surrounding the participants or their personal movement patterns cannot be foreseen, the sound design is not geared towards constructing a linear narrative. It aims, rather, to create individual, but loosely-connected scenes. To achieve this, acoustic elements are placed on street corners, on wide, open spaces or in lively passage ways as they relate to a sensation and meaning created by their architecture or the human beings inhabiting it.

Applying their other senses and their feeling for the specific place the participants then put the perceived sensations into a larger context. This ability to freely associate intentional design elements through reflection accepts the spectator in the temporal and spatial complexity of his cognition.

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the University for Applied Arts Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture. We would also like to thank Anatol Vitouch, Amira Ben-Saoud, Anne Thieme, Max Berger and Sarah Rechberger for lending our project their voice and Angelika Katzinger for designing and fabricating our wearable computer jacket.

Bernhard Garnicnig and Gottfried Haider are students at the University for Applied Arts Vienna.

„A: Only love can save me and love has destroyed me.“
(Sarah Kane: „Crave“, 1998)

Behind the walls that shape the city and within the minds of strangers passing by in public space, things happen that we know nothing about. Sarah Kane's ”Crave” offers insight into the lives and minds of four sketchy characters. What they reveal from their hearts and inner thoughts is exemplary for the processes behind the anonymous faces surrounding us. Her phrases, sometimes seeming like mere scraps of thought, and the loosely structured narrative reflect our very own inner voice that shadows us night and day.

„M: Absence sleeps between the buildings at night,
C: Between the cars in the lay-by,
B: Between the day and the night.“
(Sarah Kane: „Crave“, 1998)

The space we live in influences our perception and behaviours in a major way. We adapt our movements, thinking and emotions to its structural requirements. The urban soundscape's dynamics defy control. To cope with the resulting chaos we apply strategies to delimit our intake of information. The media is a significant part of these strategies. In the context of urban design the visual in its various forms – ranging from advertising design to architecture – has prevailed and resulted in the development of diverse stylistic elements and textures. Despite the uninterrupted presence of every noise imaginable in our civic habitat the cities’ resonating space and the ever transforming noise, however, have been left unattended. This seems almost reasonable considering that most of it is unconsciously emitted waste, a signal at best, but in any case lacking deliberate texture or control. Nevertheless, ever since the advent of the transistor radio, people have used sound represented in music to shape their individual selective reality. This phenomenon is the foundation of the artists' work, as they transform a strategy of selective constriction into an extension of the perceptible.

„A: I don't have music, Christ I wish I had music but all I have is words.“
(Sarah Kane: „Crave“, 1998)

Today's culture has us moving through the city driven by specific rationally comprehensible goals. Places associated with different functions and results are starting point and destination on our way through a public space, which itself is dominated by the infrastructure necessary to dispatch humans and goods. This utilitarian pattern of behaviour leads to a partial dullness when presented with new stimuli as well as to the meaning and value of differences. The majority of the elements that make up a city are perceived as repetitive and futile. Craving opposes this phenomenon by offering the possibility of a fundamental change in the perception of the self-evident. Through the concerted construction of situations for specific places and with regard to the randomness of movements, events and changes these locations are exposed to, the artists create a new gestalt of the environment, only by manipulating the site's soundscape, and invite us to discover a reality transcending mere purpose.

By simulating perspective (binaural) listening, the artists blend voice and sound sources into the participant's soundcape like a Trompe l’oreille. These sources are scenically affiliated to specific locations in the area and can be directed both spatially and temporally. The origin of these sources can be acoustically located because the entire range of human movement as well as the auditory physiology are incorporated into the spatial sound rendering. The resulting soundscape is composed of the location's actual ambient sounds and the constructed overlay, generating an extended reality that feels just like a real-time recording of the place surrounding the listener. Following the situationist dérive, the participant is supposed to allow himself to be led by the ambience of these sites, thereby forming his own narrative sequence in the act of walking.

“In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.”
(Anonymous palindrome, "We walk in circles at night and are consumed by the fire.")

An environmental analysis conducted beforehand resulted in the creation of a geographical and emotional map of the Viennese „Donaustadt“, which contributed to the process of mapping Kane's drama and additional sound to the emotional state of the area. This was accomplished loosely based on the principles of psychogeography (cognitive mapping). All numerically ascertainable qualities were recorded with a custom developed data logging device. In addition to the existing topography, different architecture related data, such as the sites' temperature patterns, people’s common movement paths or the location of closed-circuit television cameras resulted in a three dimensional map of the site.

The artists’ production is staged in Vienna DC, a modern complex of tall commercial and residential buildings in the city’s Donaustadt district. This most preeminent area is defined by a branch of the river Danube in the south and the United Nations building in the north. This building once stood for modernity in an architectural as well as geopolitical sense, but lately has received more attention for its contamination with asbestos. The actual setting, Vienna DC, was conceived in its entirety on the drawing board in 1991 after plans for a World Fair on the very same spot had been vetoed in a referendum that same year. Nevertheless, ten years after its opening, the area is still urbanity in progress as various vacant lots create a layered surface, whose heaps of dirt contrast with the spotless facades otherwise dominating the view. The place is not only housing multinational corporations and information technology firms in the obvious office skyscrapers, but there are also vivid residential zones scattered in between. One can literally walk around a corner to see the number of suits diminished and people leading their lives in a slower and more informal way. There is a bizarre city within, whose 4000 inhabitants have adapted to the given system of open spaces and the spatial logic of the complex. For them the architects envisioned a place of worship (coined Gebetsreaktor – prayer reactor), a most out of place museum exhibiting works of an Austrian sculptor, a bilingual school and kindergarten, an ordinary supermarket, a number of expensive cafés located in the lobbies of skyscrapers, and a restaurant. Other unique architectural features also have a strong influence on the perception of the space: e.g. a wide flight of stairs leading up to nothing, surveillance cameras placed at eye level, deserted children’s playgrounds or a vast empty space whose floor is covered in glaring white paint. This entire microcosm allows the artists to use the place’s emotional tectonics and possible associations while breaking with the normal patterns of movement, perception and interaction with the environment and other people.

The participant is equipped with a portable computer and headphones. Custom software determines his position via GPS, tracks his head- and body movements through a gyroscope and accelerometer and based on their results renders the audio composition in real-time. Through the simulation of binaural hearing sounds previously affiliated to certain places now become audible from their specific direction. The software incorporates a real-time virtual accoustic environment rendering engine, developed by the NASA Ames Research Center. It is based on a head-related transfer function (HRTF), describing how a given sound input (parameterized as frequency and source location) is filtered by the diffraction and reflection properties of the torso, head and pinna before reaching eardrum and inner ear. These location-specific filter effects provide the human neural system with enough cues to properly locate the sound’s source. Through the realistic simulation of these effects it is now possible to place "invisible actors" and sound emitting props into the listener's environment and allow him to immerse himself in the theatrical composition. The process of composition consists of positioning monophonic sound sources in the geographic coordinate system, assessing their acoustic, spatial and temporal properties, and setting up interaction between multiple sources and the listener. The result is a script of the whole scenery which can be read by computers. The framework allows for timing and keyframe animation of all relevant parameters. This way, for example, a voice can follow an animated path after being triggered by the approaching listener. The underlying technology enables the artists to work in any place on earth to create site-specific narrative compositions.

McDonough, Tom: Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (2004)
Andreotti, Libero: Theory of the Dérive and other situationist writings on the city (1996)
Home, Stewart: What is situationism? (1996)
Lefebvre, Henri: Rhythmanalysis (2004)
Cage, John: Silence (1983)
Schaub, Mirjam: Janet Cardiff - the walk book (2004)
Bull, Michael: Sounding out the city (2000)
SWR2 Audiohyperspace - Murray Schafer im Gespräch mit Sabine Breitsameter
Georg Simmel: Die Grosstädte und das Geistesleben
Minard, Robin: Sound environments (1993)
Casey, Edward S.: Earth-mapping (2005)
Schmidt, Eva: Robert Smithson - Gesammelte Schriften (2000)
Long, Richard: Richard Long (2002)
Serra, Richard: Richard Serra (2003)

The artists first presented this concept and the technology in October 2006. A work-in-progress version was presented at the 4th International Mobile Music Workshop (Amsterdam) in May 2007. Recently the project was presented at the 5th International Mobile Music Workshop (Vienna) in May 2008. Read more about their progress on the project weblog.

In „Craving“ von Bernhard Garnicnig und Gottfried Haider wird ein an Sarah Kanes (1971 – 1999) Theaterstück “Crave” (dt. “Gier”) angelehnter Text im öffentlichen Raum auditiv inszeniert. Dabei wird die Textvorlage über Kopfhörer, einen tragbaren Computer mit Positionssensorik sowie einer eigens entwickelten Raumklang-Simulation als Sprach- und Klangkomposition in der Wiener Donaustadt verortet. Dort driftet der Rezipient durch eine radikal veränderte Umgebung in der die Grenzen zwischen Realität und Inszenierung verschwimmen.


Das Projekt wurde von der Universität für Angewandte Kunst und vom Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur gefördert.
Stimmen: Anatol Vitouch, Amira Ben-Saoud, Anne Thieme, Max Berger und Sarah Rechberger.
Wearable Computer Design und Herstellung: Angelika Katzinger


Bernhard Garnicnig und Gottfried Haider sind Studenten an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien.