Cross-Media Interaction for the Virtual Museum: Reconnecting to Natural Heritage in Boulder, Colorado

Silence of the Lands is a virtual museum of natural quiet in Boulder, Colorado, based on locative and tangible computing. The project promotes a model of virtuality that empowers the active and constructive role of local communities in the interpretation, preservation, and renewal of natural quiet as an important element of the natural heritage. This is accomplished by using sounds as conversation pieces of a social narrative aimed at transforming the virtual museum into an organism linking the people, perspectives, and values that pertain to the specific environmental setting of Boulder, Colorado. The project combines multiple technologies and social practices in a cross-media interaction comprising: (a) data catching (i.e., capturing sounds from the natural environment); (b) data description (i.e., mapping the soundscape on the Web); and (c) data interpretation (i.e., creating a shared ideal soundscape in the public space).