This research-creation project presents the development of an augmented reality (AR) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music and sound installation, an extended reality interactive experiential digital solution for augmenting audible-driven elements in a public exhibition setting. It is a transmedia initiative as part of a music project, ‘This Land’. The project connected contributors and musicians, involving traditional to contemporary vocal and instrumental sounds. The This Land project embraces cultural and social perspectives and related contemporary discourses within the Australian context. As AR technology was being explored as an ongoing study for the project, focused on providing a hybrid digital heritage experience, a number of conventional printed designs (posters and photograph exhibits) were embedded with augmented musical and sound elements. This Land commenced as a series of artistic performative events and placemaking activities built around many years of collaboration between the staff and students from the Conservatorium and the Wollotuka Institute at the University of Newcastle, and extended its collaboration to work with Newcastle Art Gallery (NSW, Australia), Akur Meta Torres Strait Islander Corporation, and has involved experts from Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania. Its vision embraces issues of Indigenization, decolonization, reciprocity and language revitalization. This Land AR was used for an exhibition where users experienced technology-enhanced features of the prototype system in the public setting, focused on promoting the awareness and understanding of humanities and social sciences context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.
Matthias et al. (Mon,) studied this question.