Planetarium as a Spatial Visual Musical Instrument

Acoustic Interloper

A Circular Planetarium as a Spatial Visual Musical Instrument (a white paper).
This is how I spent summer 2018.

I highly recommend reading B. Blesser and L. Salter, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, MIT Press (2007), which centers on aural architecture, for anyone setting up a novel listening space.

Abstract to paper linked above:

Planetariums have been home to spatial visual music for over sixty years. Advanced technology in spatial sound such as sound field and wave field systems are superseding channel-based systems as areas for research. Nevertheless, there is room for invention in immersive spatial visual music in a channel-based planetarium. Circular seating minimizes problems with sonic reflections from circular walls suffered by unidirectional theatre seating arrangements. Circular seating supports dynamic permutation of channel-to-speaker routing as a corrective and compositional measure. Full dome projection of visuals gives inherent support for graphics-to-music spatial correlation and related immersive effects. This paper is a case study of the aural architecture of one small circular planetarium and the visual music composition and performance approaches that it supports.

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Figure 8. One and two reflections from a (75 degree) speaker

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Figure 9. Six reflections from a speaker

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Figure 11. One vertical reflection from the dome

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Figure 13. Two demo runs of dome painting

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MusicMan11712 · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 12:59 pm Post subject:

I need to come back to this when I have fewer things on my to-do list. Possibly related (to me: similar goals, different methods; or maybe overlapping multiple trajectories), so let me toss it in: https://cisl.rpi.edu/news/06132017-1124/sonification-presentation-icad-2017.
--Steve

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:00 pm Post subject:

Hi, Dr. Steve. Thanks for the link!

I was browsing electro-music, felt guilty that I hadn't contributed anything lately, and then remembered this paper. I missed the fall equinox. Crying or Very sad

In-semester is so hard, so much work (spent much of today grading graphics projects). Next spring is sabbatical, and I am strongly inclined to do another free, 2-day electro-music event in June 2019 in the planetarium with this sound system.

People who attended Chateau Sonore 2007, what was the format like? Mosc once told me that it was more or less a continuous improv session with breaks. Any additional info on that? I had been thinking about having tutorial workshops that lead to performances, similar to the zero-input mixer workshops and some of the other workshops that were followed by performances at U.S. EM events, but I started to think that maybe instead, just doing themed improv sessions, where people submit themes for approval, and then folks sign up to play in theme sessions, where a theme is like a jazz head or other improvisational framework. I guess that is somewhere between structured and open improv.

Back to the current paper, I may submit this paper for a talk to IMERSA 2019, not sure yet, have to decide soon. Also thinking about doing a video with music.