Crow sounds
Fish sounds
Snake sounds 
Spider sounds
All of these sounds are 16 bit AIFF format.
There were four Critters in
Placeholder. Each had a repertoire of recordings, used
to entice participants to come enough to
embody as that Critter's
Smart Costume, made by a member of the Precipice Theatre Company (Fish was recorded by several members, to give the impression of a school).
| Crow sounds |
Fish sounds |
|
| Snake sounds |
Spider sounds |
The Voice of the Goddess was both the fifth pre-recorded "character" in Placeholder and also the third real-time participant. The recordings of Goddess were done by Brenda Laurel, who also was the member of the real-time support staff who usually played the role of the Goddess, although others also played the role.
There were three places or Worlds in Placeholder, each with a collection of sounds unique to that place. These were story seeds, and descriptions of the particular World, and also environmental sounds particular to the particular World:
In the Hoodoos World, there were sounds of crows flying through the air
, there was a wind sound, that was spatialized using the
Convolvotrons to appear to wander about the Magic Circle within a distance of ten to two hundred meters; there was also a distant sound of running water, which a participant could close their eyes and point to - and then open their eyes and find themselves pointing accurately at the Bow River in the valley below the earthern spires of the Hoodoos World.
In the
Cave World, there were several drips that "plopped" into the pool of water in the Magic Circle, as the environmental sound for that World. We also used special audio processing to add reverberation to the sounds in the Cave World, since it was a small enclosed space - originally, we had planned to use the echoic model of the
Convolvotrons, but that consumed too much processing power - to model the reflections off six walls would have reduced us to just one sound source, and we deemed that underwhelming compared to the multiple voices needed for the Voice of the Goddess, the Critter enticements, story seeds, participant voices, Voicemarks stored in Voiceholders, Portal sounds, and water sounds. The reverb worked well for most participants - but its non-physically correct sound deeply disturbed two professional musicians, who left the Cave World for the other Worlds and did not return.
In the Waterfall World the visual flow field of the falling water (we used a 30 frame movie loop) was matched by the sound of a real waterfall, sampled at four points by Rob Tow. Field recording the water sounds for the Waterfall World was at times very challenging; on one field recording expedition, Brenda Laurel had him strap microphones on his head, and walk into a 10 meter 4 degree Centigrade waterfall, in order to record what it should be like when a participant put their own head in the virtual waterfall. Protecting microphones from damage in these dangerous and wet environments was a challenge - we ultimately hit upon the idea of encasing them in unlubricated condoms, thus achieving safe audio recording. The four points used to create the sound field (two stereo pairs, one recorded at the base of a waterfall and one recorded at the top) were placed near the four corners of the waterfalls' visual extent using the Convolvotrons. By doing this, the auditory perceptionwas that of a field of sound, as opposed to a point source - added in a very compelling way to the participants' sense of presence as they moved their bodies about the Magic Circle in front of the waterfall - or, in Crow's case, dive-bombed down the waterfall.
Finally, when a participant approached a Portal, they would hear a special iconic sound indicating which World they would be transported to if they entered the Portal - this might be the same or different for different participants, depending on a random number generator which controlled which World they would go to next.
Follow the three links below, to hear sounds peculiar to each of the World.
"Voicemarks" were the audio graffiti that participants left in the Three Worlds, contained in the Voiceholders. After each performance, we carefully archived what was created, leaving a few behind to tantalize and stimulate the next participants... and every Voicemark made in
Placeholder may be listened to by following this link:
Voicemarks
