Project: "The Memory Trace"__Concept and Content for the 3D-Audioinstallation at Weimar City Castle, Germany

An audio installation by Lukas Taido for the courtyard of the Weimar city castle. It was staged on 3 nights from 7th of august 7 to 9th of august 2015.

For each performance, the courtyard was opened for a maximum of 130 people and then closed until one 10-minute cycle of the installation was completed. During these 3 nights, more than 7000 listeners came to experience it.

Content: The installation "The Memory Trace" is based upon the free artistic assumption, that in order to posess a spirit or genius loci, the courtyard of the city castle has to have means of memorizing past events, if not even dispose a "memory" of its own. Within the installation the visitor experiences - on a purely auditive level- how the inner courtyard witnessed a situation shortly after it’s construction in the late 18th century: the arrival of a horse-driven wagon and someone entering the building. But this memory subsequently changes during the passing of time, becomes transformed, distorted - and this process of the spirit of the place "forgetting" is artistically staged through six, about 3-minute-long cycles of audio,each one representing about 36 years of time passing. "The Memory Trace" creates a virtual process of forgetting: suppressing, modifying, adding false information - sometimes deliberately and sometimes unconsciously - similar to the processes taking place in our mind and emotions when we recall past memories.

The audioinstallation is reproduced on a 48-channel Iosono © 3D-wave synthesis system, which does not only provide a full-range 360 degree surround-sound but also allows vertical sound architectures.

See and download a detailed description about this project here.