Camera Musica

The installation is based on CAVE technology, i.e. four video projectors show moving stereo pictures, using one floor projection and three wall projections, in a cubic space. These join together to form a continual three-dimensional impression for the visitors. This makes the virtual representation of individual objects or even of whole landscapes possible. Acoustically, a spatial impression is made by the spatial representation of sound scenarios as well as by moving sounds produced by eight loudspeakers mounted in different places around the cube. The floor is designed as a vibrating element. By linking several sensory impressions, the illusion of immersion in the virtual scene is strengthened. This is what has made CAVE installations prototypes of immersive environments.

There are many reasons why we think that such costly and complicated technology has to be examined as part of the MEET project.

Spatial display techniques in the form of immersive environments promote natural perception and movement/gestures. Several visitors can enter and use the installation, and communicate with one another in a natural fashion. In the foreseeable future, these installations will run on the basis of networked PCs, thus becoming more widely distributed.

For this reason, school pupils who visited the CM were asked about their impressions, physical reactions, ideas for its possible areas of use, and, in particular, about its possible use in schools.

This questionnaire is at present being evaluated.

For the first time in the eight years of CAVE technology's existence, CM uses the medium to create a spatial composition.

The visitors are confronted by a group of seven cubic objects surrounded by darkness and only dimly lit by the virtual night sky. With hand-held navigation instruments, visitors approach the objects. Their surfaces display a grid pattern of white, gray and transparent areas. As the visitors draw closer, this allows them to see inside the objects, which now take on a monumental appearance. Glowing colored structures are to be seen inside the monochrome, variously-sized cubes. Most of these structures are again cubic and semi-transparent, but rotated in relation to the outer cube. The installation, which up to now has been silent except for a soft whistling sound, reveals to the visitor that he/she can slip through the walls of all these structures. He/she sees that the large, grayish surrounding surfaces are the outer limits of an acoustic inner world that, like the seed of a fruit, is only to be encountered in its full complexity and variety (information density) in the colored structures. At the same time, the acoustic structures are immovably fixed in their visual, sub-divided and complicated outer casings; this provides the basis for the free exploration of the composition.

The movements of the visitor - whether with the manual control box when the distance involved is large, or through changing the position of the "control goggles", which are tracked electromagnetically - have different effects on the movements of the colored core areas and the acoustic locations that go along with them.

The exploration of the composition as model now takes place as a learning and memory process involving the connection of the various sensory characteristics. The visitors realize that the different areas of the CM also represent emotional qualities. This influences the amount of time spent in the objects and how frequently they are visited, as well as the form of the "tracks" between them.

This is a significant factor for the creation of education environments. In future, immersive environments will be the main tools used for the representation and exploration of multi-dimensional databases. Navigation is an often confused and confusing terrain can be facilitated by spatial sound markers. A characteristic element of non-linear acoustic narration will become an everyday object.