Sonic Immersion : Interactive engagement in realtime immersive environments

As I walk into the gallery, I hear a soft trickling, ambient sound, as if the room from which it comes is singing, resonating to an unseen excitation, calling out its place in the world, assured and wholesome, extrovertly trumpeting the technological wizardry it contains – inviting, like a siren on a rock, but here disguised, enclosed, almost intimate. I walk towards the source and stand at the threshold of the room, absorbing the rich and multifarious tones, aware as I come closer, of their complexity, an almost life like sense of movement, of interaction and articulation in the resonating layers. The audible domain provides an intuitive, experiential, visceral, instinctive, spontaneous and intimate perceptual habitat where the human body is central, where a visceral engagement with sonic architectures may dismiss the western mind-body split as hopelessly inadequate. These characteristics allow the interactive sound environment to present a unique articulation of space and place, one in which the fluidity of the human body can be empowered to find new ways of engaging with the immediate environment. This unique and many faceted approach appoints space itself as a performative medium, instructing the user in new ways of listening, whilst simultaneously casting the listener as creator, a performative agent.