The Slovak National Gallery presents a unique project in Slovakia: audio plays for mobile phones created especially for remote branch in Strážky. The aim of the project was to present the history of the renaissance manor house Strážky though an attractive form.
The most valuable collection in the manor house is the Ladislav Mednyánszky exposition, which is the basis for our audio play. The author of the script is Katarina Fitková with contribution of the gallery curator Katarína Beňová and sound editing by Jonathan Prior, English sound artist. The project was narrated by professional actors František Kovár, Dušan Szabó, Helena Čertíková and Miriam Kalinková, who portrayed 17 different characters. The organizer of the project was the Education Department at SNG and lab.SNG.
The application offers the visitors of the manor house the opportunity to expand the guided tour with short audio plays that combine the elements of radio play with field recordings (recordings of the environment and the surroundings of the manor house). This eliminates the need to rent special equipment, the applications is free and widely available for mobile phones with iOS and Android operating systems.
The application offers the user easy navigation - in the interior of the manor house, the path determined by the guided tour, the gardens are depicted through a simple map. Instead of the traditional format of audio guide, we focused on creating a story and a narrative (audio play) which is composed of individual recordings tied to specific parts of the manor house (and the gardens). The audio play itself combines the elements of historical fiction of the lives of Ladislav and Margita Mednyánszky and field recordings. All recordings are tied to specific place and complement the atmosphere to reveal the individual parts of the story. There are 14 individual stops.
The application is available for free.
2014