A Journey Through Time at Heldenplatz

SONIC TRACES and the hdgö present an Augmented Audio Reality Project

From May 1, 2020, until March 2025, visitors to Vienna’s Heldenplatz were able to travel acoustically through the past and into the future. With headphones, you can experience the 1848 bourgeois revolution as an immersive sound experience or take an acoustic time journey into the year 2084. Using the latest Augmented Audio Reality technology from SONIC TRACES, conversations and soundscapes from the past and future are brought into the present via app and headphones. Each person can control their individual sound experience through their own movements.

Heldenplatz 1848

In 1848, today's Heldenplatz was part of the imperial Hofburg and was not publicly accessible. Citizens from all walks of life united to fight against the absolutist monarchy, censorship, surveillance, and political disenfranchisement. They demanded participation, individual freedom, and the rule of law. The revolutionary dream of democracy and freedom of speech lasted less than a year before the old regime fully regained control. Through the SONIC TRACES app, you can hear how women, students, workers, and the general population experienced this upheaval, and what the nobility—and even the emperor himself—might have said. It all comes across vividly and immediately.

Heldenplatz 2084

Artificial intelligence has taken over government functions for the benefit of humanity. Every person has a personal assistant—called a "Guardian"—in their ear. There are no more unanswered questions. In SONIC TRACES’ vision of the future, Heldenplatz is called the Square of Free Thought. It is the only remaining place where the personal assistants do not function. The ruling AI has granted humans this one exception, secretly hoping that people—no longer accustomed to freedom of thought—will, out of fear, willingly submit once again to data control. The Square of Free Thought is home to all sorts of figures—both human and robotic.

“With our very first sound project, the art installation by Susan Philipsz, we were already audio pioneers at Heldenplatz. This collaboration with SONIC TRACES once again shows how exciting and innovative auditory storytelling can be. SONIC TRACES has developed a tool for a wide audience, creating a contemporary bridge from yesterday into today and tomorrow,” says Monika Sommer, Director of the hdgö.

“What an amazing time we live in, where we can physically move through stories! The interactive possibilities of technology are changing the way we tell stories. That’s also one of the connecting elements between the scenarios of 1848, 2084, and our present day: technology is a key factor when it comes to change. And these changes can deeply affect our understanding of the world. SONIC TRACES Heldenplatz can make us think—but above all, it is meant to entertain.” That’s how Peter Kollreider describes the SONIC TRACES project.

The app can easily be installed on your smartphone, and you can use your own headphones—allowing you to experience history anytime, independent of opening hours.

Download for

iOS

ANDROID

SONIC TRACES Heldenplatz
is an Augmented Audio Reality project funded by the Vienna Business Agency, created by masterminds Thomas Aichinger and Peter Kollreider. Visitors move through a 3D sound field where distant sound sources are quieter than those nearby. Users can walk toward voices and sounds, allowing them to choose what they want to hear.
 

To detect the direction of the user’s gaze and to intensify the experience, special headphones with an integrated head tracker can be borrowed free of charge at the House of Austrian History. However, the app can also be used with any standard headphones, as long as the smartphone is pointed in the same direction the user is facing.
 

Thomas Aichinger explains the technology: “Spatial audio (three-dimensional sound) makes it possible to move through a virtual sound world in real life. Users are presented with content they can interact with. A self-contained system like this is currently unique worldwide. All you need is a smartphone – a device already embedded in our everyday lives. What’s especially important to us, though, is that users don’t even notice this innovative technology. They stroll naturally through this sound world, relying entirely on their usual sense of acoustic orientation.”