EAST - Workshop on Augmented Sound

INTRODUCTION
The present is always invisible because its environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention.
—Marshall McLuhan
How to render the invisible computational environment into a physical experience? According to Marshall McLuhan environments are invisible. “One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.” To address this question of invisibility, this workshop will not follow the anti-environment strategy but propose to evaluate the prospects of augmenting an environment. Unlike the total immersion of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality transforms the environment by placing virtual objects real-time in the real world. The medium maps the content of the virtual space seamlessly onto the physical world and establishes a model of interaction. The workshop specifically aims to go beyond the usual functionality of sound as the accompaniment of virtual imagery and investigates how to interact with an environment by augmented sound. Think of the sonar principle (an acronym for Sound Navigation and Ranging) used in submarines to scan the environment outside the capsule. Sealed off, in this metaphorical black box, the only way to perceive the surroundings is by augmenting it with sound pulses and listening to what the environment reflects.





The questions to be considered include
- What is sound specialization, augmented sound, immersive audio?
- What is movement tracking and how is it integrated in cultural services and products?
- What are the influential projects and practices in the field sound art dealing with sound specialization and sound in relation to its environment.
- What are the specificities of working with spatial or augmented sound?
- How to design interaction models for augmented sound?

Practical Work
In addition to the presentations of concepts and projects, and class discussions, the workshop also includes a practical part. The students will be introduced to SPASM and POZYX.
SPASM is a spatial audio sound mixer, to investigate spatial sound in general and its application within mixed and augmented reality in particular. While other existing spatial audio systems depend on a preliminary step to render the sound in a virtual space, SPASM creates spatial mixes in real-time. This allows the user to experience instantly how different sounds work together in a spatial mix. Listeners can interact with sounds while they explore the space.
POZYX is a hardware tracking solution that provides accurate positioning and motion information by placing a minimum of 4 anchors in space to tack mobile beacons.
The students will get and introduction to SPASM and learn how to place sounds in a virtual space, design user experiences in that space, and reflect on the user interaction with the virtual sound environment. The POZYX system will be use to track listeners in the space and control SPASM. The students will receive a practical assignment and they will need to present their work at the end of the workshop.
SPASM is made with the Max for Live toolkit .It is recommended that students bring a laptop to install the demo version of Ableton Live is.




WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS
Boris Debackere is an artist and researcher lecturing at LUCA School of Arts, KU Leuven. Debackere is currently serving as the head of V2_Lab in Rotterdam, an instigator of artistic projects that interrogate and illuminate contemporary issues in art, science, technology, and society. As a media artist, his primary interest lies in the interplay of art with a socio-technological framework. In the field of digital art, his practice has a multimedial character with a recurring key concept: to experience the materiality and performativity of a medium that might appear to be a virtual environment. Debackere received the Liedts-Meesen new media nomination 2010, won the Georges Delete 2014 Prize for Best Original Music and Sound Design and received the 2015 Ensor Sound Design Award.

Jan Misker is a project manager in the V2_Lab. He is responsible for managing aRt&D projects that have a strong technical aspect, for example involving Artificial Intelligence or Augmented Reality. In this capacity he bridges artistic concepts to the latest technological developments. Projects he lead include a wide range of artworks, science collaborations, the Summer Sessions network for Talent Development, and curating and coordinating art exhibitions. Prior to his appointment at V2_ Jan worked as a researcher in the field of Man Machine Interaction. Jan holds an MSc in Cognitive Science and Engineering.

Academic Host
QIU Zhijie,Dean, School of Experimental Art, CAFA; Professor
Producer：
Iris Long,Researcher on Art, Science and Technology, CAFA

How to Apply
Please send the following material tolongxinru@cafa.edu.cn
（1）Biography and portfolio
（2） Application statement