The 100-foot-long 3D Listening Space along the Window Walk of the new Arctic Studies Center in the Anchorage Museum will be a total aural environment that immerses visitors in the languages and lives of Alaskan peoples and in the seasonally shifting voices of wind, ocean, forests, tundra, and ice.

Charles Morrow Productions’ 3D Sound Cube technology lies at the heart of the Listening Space. Utilizing speakers positioned at floor level and high above people’s heads, the audio installation will “take you there,” right into events, ceremonies, storytelling, music, and the vivid soundscapes of village life and the surrounding natural world.

The Listening Space provides an audio complement to a major new exhibition of Alaska Native art and culture, Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska. The exhibition will display almost six hundred historic objects from the Smithsonian's arctic collections and was developed cooperatively by the Arctic Studies Center (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution), Alaska Native scholars and organizations, and the Anchorage Museum. The Sharing Knowledge web site (http://alaska.si.edu) presents some of the rich cultural knowledge that Elders have shared about the exhibited works.

The Listening Space and Living Our Cultures exhibition will be installed in the museum's new wing, now under construction and planned to open in April 2010. For more information, please visit web sites for the Arctic Studies Center and Anchorage Museum. Construction of the Listening Space gallery has been supported by generous grants from all twelve Alaska Native Regional Corporations: Ahtna, Incorporated, The Aleut Corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Bering Straits Native Corporation, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Calista Corporation, Chugach Alaska Corporation, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., Doyon, Limited, Koniag, Incorporated, NANA Regional Corporation, and Sealaska Corporation.

The commitment and involvement of Alaska Native sponsors, advisors, Elders, and communities will extend into sound design and production, including collaboration with indigenous media producers. The Listening Space will be linked to a training program for high school students, engaging them in the preparation of new sound installations and inspiring careers in media production and the arts.

Native community support for the Listening Space reflects core values and perspectives, including the importance of indigenous languages and oral traditions; respect for the beauty and power of the natural world; and the desire to share cultural heritage with both the world at large and future generations.

This project will be produced in collaboration with the New Wildferness Foundation. Production sponsorships are now being sought to enable creation of the inaugural sound programming in the Listening Space, and for related outreach and training.

Click here to hear and read about Arctic Sounds: Listening to the Far North.