Re-Sounding Of A Lost Place
Project Description:
Re-Sounding of a Lost Place is a locative media project designed as a GPS-triggered mobile app in 2015. It offers a sound-walk experience through a vacant lot in Downtown Buffalo, New York, reactivating the layered histories of a once-vibrant but now forgotten site.
The location once housed Buffalo’s Walden House, residence of Buffalo’s mayor (1838–1839) before becoming the site of two Music Halls. The first music hall, built in 1883, burned down in an fire accident in 1885. A second Music Hall, constructed in 1887 and later redesigned as Shea’s Teck Theatre in 1900, served as a key cultural venue for decades until its demolition in 1982, following disrupted access caused by downtown subway construction. Today, this historically rich site stands as an empty grass lot, its stories largely erased from public consciousness.
By using mobile media and locative technology, Re-Sounding of a Lost Place transforms the act of walking into a dynamic engagement with the history of the place. The project allows participants to experience the site’s absent narratives through immersive, location-triggered audio recordings, encouraging them to rethink and reconnect with spaces often overlooked in everyday life. This use of locative technology and the mobile app offer accessibility and interactivity, guiding users to physically inhabit a forgotten place while being surrounded by its reimagined sounds and stories.
Re-Sounding of a Lost Place highlights the importance of paying attention to urban erasure and memory, reminding us how architectural loss affects the cultural and historical identity of cities. By reactivating these voids in the landscape, the project creates a bridge between the past and present, inviting participants to rethink their relationship with urban space. In a time when physical remnants of history are increasingly replaced or erased, mobile technology becomes a tool for preservation, storytelling, and reflection, turning forgotten places into sites of renewed meaning and collective remembrance.
