Aural augmented reality is a burgeoning sub-field in the area of digital humanities and digital storytelling, reflecting a broader turn towards multimodal and sensory approaches to narrative, cultural heritage, and embodied digital experiences (Hagedoorn & Sauer 2018). While much digital humanities research privileges textual (and to some degree visual) communication, a recent emphasis in sound as a medium for exploring geographical or spatial narratives, embodiment, and the materiality of place and space indicates a warming towards experimenting with other forms of narrative creation and expression (Zhang, Song, & Liu 2024; Münster & Terras 2019; Hall 2011). Podcasts, sound walks, audio guides, and other forms of auditory engagement have risen in popularity, and the current edge of experimentation lies in creating innovative and creative digital experiences through the use of sound.

Technological developments in regard to wide-spread geolocation, affordability of data, increased accessibility to digital devices, and the release of increasingly more user-friendly mobile augmented reality platforms have made it possible for researchers to engage with a new form of site-specific interpretation involving participatory storytelling, environmental engagement, and creative representations of data-based cultural heritage research (Dima & Maples 2021; Cliffe, Mansell, Greenhalgh, & Hazzard 2021; Sasaki, Arikawa, Lu, Utusumi, & Sato 2024). “The Mosasaurus and the Mammoth Tree” is an artistic research project that brings to life two mythical, non-human figures deeply rooted in Maastricht’s natural and cultural history: the Mosasaurus from the ENCI quarry and the giant sequoia (the Mammoth Tree / de mammoetboom) on the Tongerseweg cemetery. Through immersive sound walks and music, the project intertwines ecology, heritage, and imagination, inviting audiences to experience the city’s landscape as a living story. The Mosasaurus sound walk revives Maastricht’s prehistoric sea creature within its original habitat, while the Mammoth Tree walk, created in collaboration with British composer Graham Fitkin, transforms the cemetery into a sonic journey linking Europe’s ancient forests. Developed collaboratively with local residents, artists, and institutions such as Natuurmonumenten, IVN Limburg, Marres, and Maastricht University, the project culminates in public launch at a concert in Maastricht in the context of the European project Treeline (July 8, 2026).

Through the use of aural augmented reality, the Mosasaurus sound walk and the Mammoth Tree walk is expanded beyond a singular performance into a publicly accessible geolocated audio experience, following the paths of the original sound walks around the ENCI quarry and the Tongerseweg cemetery. This audio experience combines experimental geographically situated augmented reality technologies with recordings and creative soundscapes created by project partners in the context of the ‘Mosasaurus and the Mammoth Tree’ project.

The combined aural augmented reality project analyses how digital storytelling as a method for producing and disseminating research can reach far beyond academic audiences. Both through creative opportunities for collaboration with local partners and through the technological affordances of augmented reality, aural augmented reality encourages casual visitors, members of local associations, and fellow researchers to engage with these histories through a guided embodied sensorial experience that aims to enchant (Perry 2019; Dam, Lee, Siddiqui, Lages, & Jeon 2024). By offering a form of non-screen-based guidance and narration, the project encourages a situated mode of attention, encouraging participants to expand their minds across space, time, modalities, and the more-than-human histories that emerge throughout the landscape (Reese 2025; Privitera, Fontana, & Geronazzo 2025; Rumiński 2015).

By bringing together these diffuse parts into one aural augmented reality experience, this project contributes to ongoing conversations in digital humanities about the role of the digital for collaborative research-creation, breaking down academic silos to engage concretely with local partners, and in connecting a broad range of research disciplines through the development of these soundscapes. The technical elements of augmented reality creation also invite discussion, especially about narrative creation, ideas of place and space, embodiment, and sensory experience of cultural heritage, nature, and our local environment. It opens critical considerations of authorship and ownership, given the number of partners involved in various stages of the project, and given its shift from performance-based sound walks to permanently accessible augmented reality experiences geographically located in the ENCI quarry and the Tongerseweg cemetery.

This paper also discusses the challenges that come with working with augmented reality, including that of hacking existing software to function for the needs of this project, challenges with GPS tracking and privacy, challenges with transliteration of materials from performance to recording, and challenges with the environmental noise or sensitivity to place that the project demands. In both locations, the augmented reality experience must respect the past, present, and future environments of the spaces involved, while remaining aware and sensitive to other uses and users of those spaces such as those visiting loved ones at the cemetery. These challenges showcase both the difficulties and opportunities of working in such an interdisciplinary team, fielding a collaboration between artists, heritage professionals, ecologists, and creative technologists.