Grab your smartphone, headphones and your VR headset and experience the world premiere of an immersive, luminescent ride through a virtual 3D electronic music performance.
Human beings have both innate biological and learned cultural reactions to the sound of their environment, and to sounds in their environment - Dr Drew Crawford's research foregrounds these profound responses in his composition practice by working with music and sound in relation to the space(s) in which they are experienced.
Waves of... was originally composed for concert performance, a piece where the performers moved around the stage in a choreography of spatialised sound. Partly as a response to the COVID-19 restrictions on performance, the piece has been reimagined as a virtual reality experience where you can be inside the performance space, amplifying the affective spatial aspects of the piece impossible in real life.
* The VR experience is available for Android in the Downloads section. Instructions on how to install the programme in Android are available in the Videos section below.
* The team wanted to make an iOS version of Waves of... available publicly but that hasn't been possible at this time. If you have a Mac you could experience Waves of... on your computer, minus the VR headset by downloading File 2
Translating the piece to a virtual environment using the popular game engine Unity represents the first experiments working as part of a team with colleagues from the Winchester School of Art, James Stallwood (Teaching Fellow, Games Design and Art) and MA Communication Design student Andreea Ogledean, exploring how to tackle the problem of creating a believable hyperreality using Unity's audio capabilities.
** Hands-on Humanities Day Goes Digital **
Finally, do not miss a final video premiere and live Q&A session with Dr Drew Crawford, James Stallwood and Andreea Ogledean on Saturday 21st November for Hands-on Humanities Day Goes Digital.
The event will stream live on YouTube but please don't forget to book your ticket on Eventbrite!