AudioSign Turn – Maungatautari Island

{

The very first kids who interacted with it said ‘wow, I’ve heard that bird before but never knew what it was!

– Tom Lynch, Owner and Operator at Foris Ltd.

On the other side of the world (from blackbox-av) you’ll find the Maungatautari Ecological Island, which is the largest ecological restoration project in New Zealand. Consisting of 3400 hectares of pastureland enclosed by 47kms of predator proof fence the aim is to remove all non-native pest mammals as well as predators, and restore endangered native flora and fauna.

Bespoke AudioSign Turn

We were contacted by Tom from Foris Ltd, a local company that offers a range of tourism, interpretation and educational services around New Zealand. They’ve recently partnered with Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust to create educational programmes that take students on trips to the sanctuary.

He was looking into creating an informative audio display about New Zealand forest birds, to be used during the educational trips to the Island and help aid students in their understanding of the local birdlife.

As always the main concern during this project was that of power (or rather lack of). This led him to the AudioSign Turn, designed for use in custom outdoor listening points where a power source isn’t within reach. Robust and powered completely by the winding of its handle the U-Turn Round was designed specifically for applications such as this, and is able to play up to 8 different messages.

Maungatautari U-Turn Round wind up listening point

Tom utilised the AudioSign Turn electronics and built them into a bespoke housing, showing clearly which bird noise could be heard on each of the 8 dials and with a platform that allows even small children to reach the U-Turn handle.

The installation has been a great success, with the listening point proving itself an engaging and educational resource.