As written earlier, when hiking in the region behind the Saana fjell i discovered a variety of very special places, where i collected sonic and photographic impressions. GPS geolocation was essential to keep track of all those places and media connected to them. Already having realized that the quality of recorded sound was in no relation to the on-site experience, i decided to not use it verbatim, but instead focus on the specific quality of each sample and try to recreate it using computer-based sound synthesis algorithms. The idea was to analyze and extract the specific "voice" of a site, be it animal, herbal or geologic, recreate it and then reintroduce this interpretation into the original site. Such a recreation can never be even close to perfect. Hence, the hypothesis was that the introduction of something subtly artificial, still somewhat naturalistic, can introduce such a slight shift in the natural soundscape that a site visitor will not really recognize it out of context, but rather perk up his or her ears and listen closely.
At Kilpisjärvi there are two major hiking trails, the climb up to Saana starting at the hiking center, and the long-distance trail Kalottireitti passing through the village. Most of the hikers do not deviate much from those tracks. I have selected four sites that are off those beaten tracks, actually off any tracks, but still rather easily accessible from the Saana trail. These sites feature different habitats and different sounds, focusing on elemental forces of Lapland's landscape: water, wind, birds and mosquitos.
For the implementation of the concept i will use four portable (kind of camouflage) loudspeakers with built-in MP3 players that i have developed for a previous instance of my World construction series, 'corner passing'. Since these loudspeakers blend very well into the landscape and don't need any extra audio or power cabling, they allow to span a listening space of variable size which is not recognizable by anything else than the broadcasted sound.
