Audio that moves you, and with you

The Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience

Interior of the Spirit of the ANZAC touring exhibition. There is a group of school children wearing headphones

The Anzac tradition has in many ways shaped Australia’s national identity. Born on the battlefields of Gallipoli during World War I, it captures the qualities that typify the nation’s “character” — endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, and mateship.

It’s this enduring spirit the Australian Government, together with the Australian War Memorial and the Department of Defense, sought to commemorate with the Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience. 

Touring 24 cities and regional centres over 20 months, the country’s largest travelling exhibition featured 200 military artefacts rarely seen outside the nation’s capital, Canberra. It was experiential and highly interactive, combining archival audio and film together with a range of technologies to tell the stories of those involved in WWI, and all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations to the present day 

Working closely with creative agency Imagination, we helped architect and develop the award-winning Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience Audio Guide. Designed as a multi-layered cinematic experience, it upended the idea of a traditional museum audio tour, delivering location-aware storytelling for an intended audience of 1.2 million people.

Services
Experience strategy
Interactive media
Location-aware guides
Hardware solutions
Beacons & Wifi solutions
Partner

Australian War Memorial

Location

Canberra, Australia

A group of people stand in front of a display wall at the Spirit of the ANZAC touring exhibition. They are all wearing headphones and listening to an audio guide

Challenge

The exhibition required a leading-edge locative audio guide solution capable of serving 1.2 million visitors across a demanding touring schedule, travelling to 24 cities across Australia. The audio guide hardware had to be reliable, easy to clean and comfortable for visitors of all ages with light-weight headphones and support for high-quality stereo sound. The guide application had to operate without WiFi connectivity and instead perform all data synchronisation tasks over USB while docked for charging.

Three people wearing headphones listening to the Spirit of the ANZAC audio experience
Screen from SACE experience
Screen from SACE experience
Post visit website from the Spirit of the ANZAC exhibition

Approach

From early consultation through to ongoing support and maintenance, Art Processors worked closely with all partners and stakeholders to ensure an optimal technical and experience outcome. The project involved extensive project management, design for system architecture, software and hardware, as well as IT and AV hardware procurement. Quality assurance and testing were integral to the project throughout because due to the scale of the exhibition.

Sound has the ability to transport the mind intellectually, spatially, temporally, and emotionally — all at once. When combined with location-aware technology, it can deliver surprising, intimate and place-based experiences in situ. And that's what we did for this project, mapping spatially-aware audio to physical locations within the temporary exhibition space.

A group of people at the Spirit of the ANZAC touring exhibition. They are all wearing headphones listening to the location aware audio guide

Solution

In collaboration with project partners, Art Processors helped to conceptualise, design and build a sophisticated and reliable museum audio guide to complement the hugely popular and award-winning exhibition. The SACE Audio Experience transparently implemented a range of technologies to enable a seamless and immersive journey through the exhibition space for visitors.

  • 368,000 Visitors who used the Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience audio guide
  • 2,500 Peak number of visitors who used the audio guide
  • 20 Months the exhibition and audio guide toured around Australia
A collection of iPod Touches sit inside a charging unit

In the Press

Further Reading

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In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the many Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and honour Elders past, present and emerging. We respect their deep, enduring connection to their lands, waterways and surrounding clan groups since time immemorial. We cherish the richness of First Nations Peoples’ artistic and cultural expressions.