Budj Bim Cultural Landscape

Immersive storytelling at a UNESCO World Heritage site

Overview

The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is an area on Gunditjmara Country in south-eastern Australia, centred around the Budj Bim Volcano. The Area contains extensive evidence of the Gunditjmara’s aquaculture system, and was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in August 2019, for its Outstanding Universal Value, the first of its kind on the list.

Sound Environment was honoured to work closely with the Gunditjamara people on the Interpretive Visitors centre in the Budj Bim National Park, creating a one of a kind interactive installation of Audio, Video projection mapping and custom lighting.

This installation tells the stories of the people, culture and country of Budj Bim from ancestral creation stories, to colonisation and wars with settlers, right up to its modern day inhabitants.

The Map Table

The centrepiece of the installation is a stylised topographical map of the surrounding country. Utilising advanced projection mapping techniques, Sound Environment turned this static map into an interactive canvas. The Digital map helps to give context and connection to the land, creating a window into the dreamtime stories being told. Surrounding the main table are interactive displays that present extra information and ideas that visitors can freely browse between the main shows.

Speaking of shows, the main map table operates as an immersive theatre, having timed shows with synchronised visuals across all 5 screens and projection mapped table. Immersive 3D audio accompanies the visuals reproduced by a stunning custom speaker array. The system also integrates with the lighting within the space to really add that cinema feel.

Immersive Content Creation

The sound and visual design for Budj Bim was also produced by Sound Environment. With our expertise in sound field recording, we were able to capture some incredible soundscapes from around the Budj Bim Volcano. From here we mixed them with voice over, spatialised the sounds for our bespoke speaker arrangement and combined them with our projection mapped video. We understand the unique challenges in creating such specialised content, and being able to design the entire installation from the ground up allowed us to give an incredible amount of integration between every element of the installation.

Sound Environment worked closely with LookEar to create this experience.

Collaborators: