Betsey Biggs

Generative geo-tagged web-based audiovisual installation..

Visit the We Are Here FM project

We Are Here FM is a live, real-time web-hosted generative installation that reconfigures the earth’s sights and sounds. A constantly evolving immersive transmission traversing our world, it brings together geo-tagged audio and images with quiet ambient generative music to create unnamed, hyperreal panoramic landscapes in which audio-visual pairings that have never coexisted acquire a veneer of the ‘real.’ These experiences are often magically experimental, occasionally hauntingly disturbing, and at times utterly mundane. Quiet ambient music generated from predominant frequencies of the audio stream functions as non-diegetic mood-setting sound, connects the scenes, and plants the imaginary landscape firmly in the present.

Participants — whether experiencing it on the web or in-person at an installation — are immersed both sonically and visually in a realistic yet artificially created landscape made from sounds and images from the past, and must locate themselves — physically, emotionally, socially, and politically — within a present space. No place names or context are offered, and the scene changes every few minutes, when a new set of randomly chosen geographical coordinates is chosen.

Without any identifying information given, the landscapes are presented equally on their own terms, and participants must negotiate the space using their own eyes, ears, and imaginations, unaffected by any preconceptions context might give. Experiencing this together (even if via a personal device), a new, speculative future reality is created by the group. This experience of co-creation leads visitors to form a temporary sense of community, together navigating a weird, funny, and complicated world. We hope you will enjoy getting lost with us.

EXHIBITIONS

Ongoing: https://www.wearehere.fm

2025: Sound and Music Computing Conference, Graz, Austria

2023: University of Colorado Art Museum, Faculty Art Show

2022: Piksel Festival, Bergen, Norway, as single-channel room installation

2021: Piksel Festival, Bergen, Norway, as single-channel small-screen installation