The Elephants of Trianon is an augmented-reality audiovisual installation that extends a series of public murals into a large-scale spatial sound environment.
The Elephants of Trianon is an augmented-reality audiovisual installation that extends a series of public murals into a large-scale spatial sound environment. The original work consists of ten adjacent murals painted on garage doors in a public alley; these form part of a larger international body of public mural works by the artist. For the International Computer Music Conference 2026, the project was presented as a free-standing installation at TUHH Hamburg-Harburg using ten large construction-fence banners, each displaying one mural. These images were activated with a custom Augmented Reality app designed for The Elephants of Trianon. The mobile app responds to these images and so must view at least one of them to activate.
Using the mobile app, visitors’ devices recognize each mural and anchor a corresponding three-dimensional audiovisual scene in space. As visitors move through the installation and activate additional murals, these scenes accumulate and blend, creating a continuously evolving environment rather than a sequence of isolated works. The installation therefore functions as a spatial composition shaped by listener movement, attention, and duration of engagement as is scaled by the size and positions of the images.
The soundscape combines field recordings made in Bali, New Orleans, and Chicago with instrumental layers and voices in ten languages. Animated three-dimensional forms—birds, bats, dogs, elephants, rabbits, and celestial figures—appear among the murals, along with subtle video textures and custom shaders that bring painted elements into motion. Some virtual elements are not confined to a single mural but move through the installation space, responding to the physical layout and dimensions of the exhibition environment.
The project contributes a scalable model for mobile, spatially responsive sound installations in galleries and public spaces. The software framework and mobile application used in The Elephants of Trianon have been developed through prior public installations and gallery presentations and are designed to function across a range of exhibition formats, from outdoor murals to indoor projection and free-standing display structures. The ICMC installation demonstrates how augmented reality can be used not only as a visual medium, but as a platform for spatial audio composition and listener-driven musical form.
The artists wish to express their deep appreciation to the International Computer Music Conference, Ligeti Zentrum, and TU Hamburg-Harburg for their support and assistance in producing the banners and presenting this installation. We especially thank Jacob Sello at Ligeti Zentrum for all his efforts, communications, and great ideas in preparing this piece.