A few words about “ECHOES”

How can we capture everyday life in Athens during King Otto’s reign and in Xanthi in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

The Echoes research project aims to design and develop technological tools and methodologies for the creation and presentation of interactive content for visitors to cultural sites, with a focus on traditional settlements, using an innovative methodology of experience reconstruction and cutting-edge technologies, particularly 3D sound technology.

Experience reconstruction draws on historical sources about life and important events in the settlement’s past to create a story world with characters, plot, and events that, because they are realistic and realistically situated in real space, serve as a means of reviving the settlement’s life. The visitor experiences the world of history through a digital application for mobile devices, the content of which goes beyond the consumption of simple audiovisual content and extends to a set of innovative technological applications, such as 3D sound and panoramic sketching, the common denominator of which is the creation of the feeling that the story world and content originates from the space around the visitor rather than through their mobile devices.

Specifically, 3D sound technology provides the visitor with an immersive experience in which he can experience a room through the perception of sound, as he receives tailored acoustic stimuli that transport him to the conditions of each era. For example, the pace of horses, talks in local dialects of the period, natural sounds, and many other stimuli that are not found in the present form of these towns can all help us immerse and participate in the cultural richness of each area. It is a fully immersive sensory experience because the music diffuses spatially, creating the illusion that the stimuli experienced by the visitor are generated in real time in the environment they are in. As a result, this technology enhances the audience’s participation in the experience by adding depth and realism.

3D audio technology, when combined with augmented reality and panoramic sketching tools, opens up new possibilities for storytelling and cultural content expression, significantly increasing participation and accessibility, providing a unique experience for all users while also facilitating people with hearing and/or vision impairments.

But why did we choose these specific cities?

As the project’s name implies, the common factor in selecting the specific cities is their acoustic environments!

Athens during King Otto’s reign is in the throes of reconstruction: If there is one sound that defines King Otto’s Athens, it is the “clatter” of the architects and lay masons who laboured day and night to rebuild the city. The battle of independence had destroyed practically all of the dwellings, and Athens’ designation as capital made it a magnet for innumerable new citizens. To accommodate them, the city was transformed into a massive construction site, and Piraeus into a thriving port where sailing ships were continuously unloading timber and other building materials.

At the same time, Xanthi had begun to emerge as a famous tobacco-producing centre as early as the 18th century, with significant commerce development, resulting in the formation of a new bourgeoisie. Furthermore, Xanthi was and continues to be a city with a diverse range of cultures and beliefs. By extension, on the same day, the residents of Xanthi may have heard the imam’s call to prayer from the minarets, as well as the bells that signalled the beginning of the holy service. The adoption of the local variation of Greek that they normally used outside of commercial transactions removes the extremely urban character of the wealthy tobacco producers with Western influences who spoke in katharevousa (a conservative form of the Modern Greek language) in the framework of their professional activity.

In conclusion, the building, social, and political disturbances of Athens, on the one hand, and the relationships that framed the social and commercial life of Xanthi, on the other, present two extremely interesting sound environments, whose reconstruction can provide a unique cultural experience for visitors to selected monuments and landmarks of the specific cities.

The Echoes research project attempts to rebuild the past using technologies that give the user the impression that the material of history originated in the environment around them rather than on their mobile device. The Athena Research Centre’s branch in Xanthi, the cultural production and management firm MENTOR, and the sound and music production company Rabbeats are collaborating on its implementation.

The research project “ECHOES – Reconstructing the life of traditional settlements through interactive experiences and 3d sound” is funded by Greece 2.0 National Recovery and Resilience Plan through the Action “Research – Create – Innovate”.