When We Grow Old: a site-specific lecture performance by Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller

A lecture performance by Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller, researchers at the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE) at the HGK Basel, was running from 19 April to 16 Juni 2024 at the Freilager-Platz on the Dreispitz campus in Münchenstein/Basel and was focusing on future scenarios that deal with demographic change.

Switzerland will undergo a significant demographic ageing process over the next 50 years. According to projections by the Federal Statistical Office, one in four people will be over 65 by then. In their role as researchers at the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE) at the HGK Basel, Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller discussed future scenarios that dealt with demographic change and are anchored as an acoustic simulation on the Freilager square in Münchenstein/Basel.

Thanks to medical breakthroughs and technical aids, will people in 2070 be mobile and actively involved in shaping Swiss society at a much older age than today? Will they still be part of the working population? How much human labour will still be needed if the use of artificial intelligence and machines is cheaper, and who will pull the strings in such an economy? How will society develop if "the young" are too few to revolutionise the traditional with new ideas? How has the climate been dealt with?

Equipped with headphones, a head tracker and a smartphone, the audience listened to the researchers on the Freilager square in a dialogue on these questions. Thanks to acoustic simulation techniques, which Ludwig Zeller and Martin Rumori researched aesthetically in a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the speculative considerations could be experienced in an extremely spatial and deceptively real way as an aurally augmented reality.

Overall, the lecture performance, consisting of four different scenes, was an examination of human identity and social structures in a technologically advanced future. Through provocative thought experiments, it invited the audience to productively speculate on the nature of change, the role of technology and the potential for human adaptation and development in an ever-changing world.

"When We Grow Old" was funded by the Agora funding instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and builds on the research results of the SNSF-Spark research project "Sonic Imagination", which was carried out from 2020 to 2021 under the direction of Ludwig Zeller at the IDCE of the HGK Basel.

When We Grow Old
A site-specific lecture performance by Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller

Third-order Ambisonics with headphone tracking
German (with English subtitles in the video version)
Length: approx. 38'00''

Concept: Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller
Production and sound design: Rupert Jaud
Scenario development: Bernd Hopfengärtner (normalfutu.re) and Ludwig Zeller
Consultancy: Manuel Buchmann (demografik.org)
Software and hardware: Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller
Video version: Ludwig Zeller
Funding: SNF Agora and SNF Spark

Speaking role of the mayor: Marianna Meyer Other speaking roles via AI voices: Rupert Jaud, Martin Rumori and Ludwig Zeller

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