w[i]nd: mediated, procedural and orchestrated spaces in a large scale virtual audio-visual installation

This presentation outlines approaches to creating mediated, procedural and orchestrated space in w[i]nd (Rawlinson, 2020), an interactive and generative audio-visual composition / installation. This project aims to be a rich and playfully immersive visual and sound art experience in a large-scale first-person Virtual Environment (VE).

The VE consists of a labyrinthine array of audio-visual exhibits of synthesised images and 3D models of wind instruments coupled with an electroacoustic soundscape of physically modelled synthesis and processed acoustic recordings that exhibit a range of characteristics of augmentation and abstraction. First person motion, underlying algorithmic parameters and triggers on exhibits are used as a mechanic to influence the sonic density and character of the soundscape.

The features in the images that are generated are at times smeared and simplified, at others glitched, complex and distorted, or liquid and abstract informing the aesthetic properties and features of sonic material so that pitch, amplitude and timbre are unstable, with rapid spectromorphological shifts between sustained material, sliding tones and fluttered and transient gestural articulations.

The work explores mediated spatial experience, open sonic form, timbre and character in non-linear interactive experiences and contributes to research into the use of sound and sounding objects as an approach to presence and immersion, orientation, navigation, interaction and ‘ergodic musicking’ [Oliva, 2019] in VEs. The research draws on architectural approaches to level design [Totten, 2014], ‘perceptual opportunity’ [Fencott, 2005] and stochastic and aleatoric approaches to indeterminacy.