Interactive Immersive Environments: A Composer's Journey (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
The potential of virtual reality tools and the variety of software suitable for creating interactive music systems and sound environments provides artists, sound engineers, and music listeners more technical and artistic room than ever before. On top of enriching and facilitating the creative process of professional artists, VR technologies can also bring the music and visual contents of an artwork nearer to the audience, allowing them to better immerse themselves in the experience. Moreover, implementing such systems may help to bring more audiences to experimental contemporary music, thus also playing an important role in renewing the classical music culture. Hans-Peter Gasselseder produced the first ever virtual reality ambisonic recordings of two entire operas, "She" (2017 by Maria Kallionpää) and Croak (2018, composed by Maria Kallionpää and Markku Klami). We argue that on top of the artistic value of the musical compositions, a complete virtual reality recording has artistic value on its own right. We will discuss both operas from the composer´s perspective, as well as present their recording processes as case studies from the viewpoint of the sound engineer. As an example of future work, we will also present a new virtual reality recording concept, using Maria Kallionpää´s interactive Disklavier Composition "Climb!" (2016-2017). The work is simultaneously a virtuoso piano composition for a professional pianist and a computer game, that also uses a specifically designed smartphone application for audience members. Although the work contains visual stimuli also in the live performance situation, we argue that the listeners could better enjoy the interactive game element if they could follow the events directly from the performer´s perspective. Our model will focus on bringing the audience members in the middle of the actions of the virtual environment of the computer game.
Immersive technologies in the formation of musical audio space
Immersive technologies in the formation of musical audio space, 2024
Immersive audio technology is increasingly used in music, with devices like cell phones and televisions replicating formats. The increasing adoption of immersive audio technologies by both consumers and professionals in the music industry has made this topic more relevant. The purpose of the research is to analyse immersive technologies that contribute to the creation of the musical audio environment. The research employed methods: literature and historical review, technical analysis, practical cases, statistical method, and the author’s personal empirical experience. The article examines the function of audio space in relation to the perception of musical art and the characteristics of musical audio space. The proposed classification categories musical audio spaces into two distinct types: natural and artificial, as well as offline and online. The article’s statistical data illustrates the changing patterns of growth in online audio consumers and the rivalry between radio stations and streaming platforms to enhance their impact on shaping listeners’ audio spaces. The research demonstrates that streaming platforms actively encourage the incorporation of musical content in immersive formats as a means to expand their market share and evoke heightened emotional and perceptual responses in customers. The article outlines techniques used in immersive music spaces to provide a distinct aural experience for the listener. The article’s practical analysis of immersive audio technologies encompasses the examination of requisite microphones and digital audio workstations that facilitate the transition from two-dimensional audio space formation to three-dimensional. In contemporary circumstances, the distribution of musical items is progressively employing three-dimensional immersive technologies. The article enumerates audio technologies that guarantee the creation of an immersive auditory environment for both listeners and musicians: Ambisonics, KLANG: technologies, and DPA 5100. The practical significance of this work rests in examining the perceptual attributes of users of immersive technologies and exploring the potential for developing immersive technologies, such as immersive musical instruments or immersive radio stations.
Virtual Reality as an Artistic Space in the Context of Musical Art
The article highlights the modern view of musical art in the context of the development of information and communication technologies, which form the perception of art in the context of virtual interpretation. The relevance of the study is based on the prerequisites of the modern development of information and innovation society. There is a need for the perception of information in the context of virtual space in the context of the twentieth century. This trend changes approaches to human activities in different spheres of life, including artistic. This article shows the basic principles of virtual reality formation in the context of creating a space for the manifestation of musical art. The basic principles of perception of new artistic media in virtualization and digitalization are defined, and aspects of musical art reproduction are analyzed. This study shows the transformation of real life into virtual simple, which contributes to the spatio-temporal thinking of man and interprets the cultural achievements of human activity throughout the historical development. The article presents theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of musical art. The reflexion of the temporal phenomenon of cultural stratification and in-depth analysis of modern digital transformation in the context of virtual space formation is defined. Music discourse is analyzed in the context of cultural dynamics in the direction of the virtual world creation. The methods of analysis and synthesis, the research method and the method of discourse analysis were applied to study the virtualization of the musical environment. This study provided a basis for reflecting the effectiveness of the virtual environment for music art.
WAVE: Sound and music in an immersive environment
Computers & Graphics, 2005
This paper presents WAVE-a Virtual Audio Environment, which embraces the implementation of an immersive musical instrument model that uses three-dimensional (3D) sound techniques combined with visualisation and virtual reality technologies. This prototype environment aims to extend the idea of a musical instrument into a new musical/ audio system, incorporating traditional musical concepts side by side with actual music concepts, in order to progress one step further in the music/sound composing and performing approaches.
Body, Space & Technology, 2011
This paper proposes reflections of an ongoing nature about the relationship of sound, image, and movement in art. Following a range of productions from stage choreographies to dance films, CD-ROMs and interactive-generative installations to videoclips and multimedia scenographies for dance and music, practical experience has shown that what may be seen as standard and complimentary elements of much contemporary interdisciplinary creation, in fact prove to offer a gamut of very different creative potentialities with each new project. This said, the question of interdisciplinary practice has also been occulted in recent years by artistic fervour and fascination surrounding digital productions that propose "new" sensorial experiences. While artists and critics alike are keen to assert how it is the technologies themselves that are responsible for "augmenting", "embodying" or "interfacing" sensorial experiences in art, the basic configuration of sound, image, and movement nevertheless remains a constitutive parameter of most productions, be they specifically digital, interactive, generative or not. Revisiting the nature of interdisciplinary creation today can be approached from various angles, for example, from the point of view of new spatial and temporal propositions or new hybridities in art. This paper chooses to look at interdisciplinarity from the perspective of intersensoriality, immersion and environment, taking as its principal reference Paroles trouvées, an installation I created in 2007 with French composer Dominique Besson and scenographer Olivier Koechlin. Conceived as a composite work involving three intertwined scores, musical, videochoreographical and optical, the interdisciplinary elements here combine in a novel way in the work's reception. Highlighting theoretical and practical issues of relevance and referring to a selection of immersive works in a brief historical overview, the paper also addresses questions of scoring, presence, interiority, texture, scale, intertextuality, and vibration.
Immersive and Interactive Music for Everyone
2019
This study seeks to understand how new and accessible technology can be used and developed to include producers of standard music into making immersive, interactive, music experiences. Through observations during a student project and an analysis of the participant's reflections it argues that even if the technology worked well, there are still many opportunities for improvements. The result shows that the repeated, non-creative, tasks like exporting and naming files can reduce musical inspiration for students with little interest in technology and that further development and studies potentially could make interactive music accessible even for them. The aspect of the project that caused most positive response was producing and mixing for super-surround which led the students to new insights and ideas for their everyday music production. Finally the result indicates that even if there would have been no technical barriers interactive music production might not appeal to everyone...
Technology has been used in the Performing Arts for centuries, from a simple tool to make a performance possible (for example, lights when night time or performed in a dark space) to much more sophisticated technologies able to transform and replicate the real scenarios where the story is supposed to take place. This practice-based research will try to explore the use of mixed reality technologies (like the Microsoft HoloLens) as a narrative tool within a live performance, specifically theatre, and how it will enhance the audience engagement, empathy with the characters, and immersion in a story. Starting with traditional and established concepts within the theatre theory from Michael Chekhov or Peter Brook this dissertation will discuss the impact that new technologies can have on the narrative. Looking if the use of this technologies serve the purpose of the story or it is just an extra aesthetic layer (multimedia vs. intermedia). Also, it will bear in mind what bene ts the new medium brings regarding presence and immersion (Slater, 2009) and how the narrative can flow in an interactive, immersive environment. (Llobera et al., 2013)
How can Visual Music be composed and presented in such an engaging way that it will turn spectators into participants? How to connect a youthful, twenty-first century audience who are keen to update their Instagram story with Visual Music? Visual Music is an art form, which is "an equal and meaningful synthesis of the visible and audible" (Lund & Lund 2009 149) and "is typically non-narrative and non-representational" (Evans 2005 11). Visual Music is often presented as cinema. Cinema audiences are generally considered to be passive spectators, whose "reactions are pre-programmed by the director, crew, cast and writer" (Mackintosh 2003 2). This paper highlights the nexus between, to use McCall's (2004) terms 'the cinematic, the sculptural and the pictorial', with a focus on creating interactive Visual Music installations.
Composing and Producing Spatial Music for Virtual Reality and 360 Media Dr
2016
Virtual Reality (VR) and associated 360 audio and video technologies, are in many ways ideally suited to the aesthetic of spatial music in which the location and/or movement of sounds in space is a composed aspect of the work. In traditional concert performances the musicians and performers are located on stage in front of the audience, however, this type of presentation cannot take full advantage of a 360 degree medium in which the viewer can shift perspectives at will. Spatial music, and in particular acoustic spatial music, is in contrast very well matched to this type of presentation as the viewer’s ability to change perspective serves a real purpose in this type of aesthetic. Indeed, many composers of spatial music have in the past arranged the seating in the venue in spirals or circular arrangements so that no one direction is prioritized over another. This paper describes some of the technical and artistic issues which arise when documenting spatial music performances using t...