Audio

The audio of the mural is projected through two hidden speakers at either end of the mural. (See the AV diagram for details.) The audio is played at a low volume. From a distance it is inaudible or barely audible. Only if we move up close to the mural do we hear it clearly. It is mixed so that sometimes we hear sounds from the left end of the mural only, sometimes from the right end only. And sometimes the audio comes from both simultaneously or pans from one end to the other. What we hear depends on where we are standing.

The sounds of the audio are separated by long stretches of silence of approximately 30 seconds each. The silences of the audio echo the whitespace of the visuals. As we stand looking at the mural, we tend to forget about the audio during the silences, and are surprised to suddenly hear a moment of sound from one side or another. (In this web simulation of a portion of the audio, the long silences of the actual audio are reduced to a few seconds of silence each.)

The sound elements include conversations among pedestrians, snippets of music, thunder, poetry read in several languages, bells, and the sound of wind and surf.