CONCEPT
An interactive sonic landscape in AR generated collectively by multiple users in real-time. Each user gets to place audio tracks anywhere in AR space in reaction to other users’ actions. The collaborative effort allows the creators as well as listeners to experience an orchestra of sounds while nestled among individual sound sources coming from all directions in virtual space.
RESEARCH
Pauline Oliveros - Deep Listening
Global and focal attention
Attention to site - absorb and respond to sounds of environment
Observe and notice the nature of sound, and its power of release and change
Deep Listening pieces contains strategies for listening and responding. Practices like Antiphonal meditation and tuning meditation experiment with how individuals respond to the tone made by one another in the whole group by alternatively tuning and shifting their own tones. “There is no leader, just consensual activity.”
These researches contribute to my idea of inviting multiple players to the experience. It’s a group activity with individual’s decision influenced by one another’s that contribute to the whole sound sculpture
Music, Sound and Space - Transformations of Public and Private Experience
Sound-masses/shifting planes in the light of linear counterpoint,
Therefore introducing three dimensions in music: horizontal, vertical, and dynamic swelling or decreasing, as we can visualize in any sheet music
The fourth, sound projection ... [the sense] of a journey into space.
Today, with the technical means that exist and are easily adaptable, the differentiation of the various masses and different planes as well as these beams of sound could be made discernible to the listener by means of certain acoustical arrangements ...
Which inspires me with the possibility of agglomerating and mapping different sonic features like rhythms, frequencies, and intensities into a configuration that responds to changes in spatial directions.
The use of space as a compositional parameter drew attention to the fact that every listener has a unique experience of a given work depending on his or her position
WHY
Sound sculptures are often times site-specific, listeners can only experience it in museum/galleries/outdoor space. By incorporating it in AR environment, listeners get to participate first hand in the creation of an auditory experience to reconfigure any current space they are in without restrictions.
Through this experience, I also want to promote the practices of deep listening. According to Pauline:
Through practicing these strategies to absorb and respond to sounds of environment, listening can be a multidimensional phenomena. One can listen and perform simultaneously.
I have been working on a few AR projects over the past 6 months, one of them was spatial audio in AR.
Advancement in spatial audio and multiplayer capabilities in AR/VR is exciting.
KNOWNS
User journey:
User chooses single or multiplayer mode depending on whether he’s alone or with friends.
Then chooses a scene that contains a set of pre-configured sounds.
Each user is assigned a unique color/visual marker that represents and distinguish themselves in the scene.
Once user enters AR scene, he can start place sound markers that are associated with audio clips wherever they want in the environment based on what the sound they observe from other users.
Depending on where they place the markers, the audio clip will sound different.
Each marker animates to the dynamics of its audio track.
Users walk around and experience the immersive soundscape, the intensity of each audio clip will rise and fade as user walk closer to or away from the sound marker.
Sound design:
I intend to keep the sound less musical and as minimal and abstract as possible
Some maybe more analog/environmental, some digital/synthesized
references:
UNKNOWNS
Platform/tool : Swift or Unity
Define users
Number of players
Considerations in sound design