Acoustic chase : designing an interactive audio environment to stimulate human body movement

Abstract

An immersive audio environment was created that explores how humans react to commands imposed by a machine generating its acoustic stimuli on the basis of tracked body movement. In this environment, different states of human and machine action are understood as a balance of power that moves back and forth between the apparatus and the human being. This system is based on spatial sounds that are designed to stimulate body movements. The physical set-up consists of headphones with attached sensors to pick up the movements of the head. Mathematic models calculate the behavior of the sound, its virtual motion path relative to the person, and how it changes over time.