Figure A: My project partner is wearing the Octagon VR goggles and holding the Motion Capture marker in her right hand.
1. About
We walked around Stockholm and recorded familiar sources of disturbances. Then, we re-created four noisy sound sceneries from the buzzing city life.
Next, we placed them into a virtual space of a motion capture (MoCap) system and investigated urban sound techniques to refine those sources to improve the living quality in cities. Such as a waterfall in front of a public area to filter out car noises.
The enhanced soundscape was also placed in virtual space - and compared to the first one.
Project partner: Sandra Ceballos Manso
2. Technical Implementation
We used the motion capture software ARENA from OptiTrack, which was linked to the software Max/MSP. Then, in the virtual space, we mapped the motion to the gain slider of Max/MSP depending on the X and Z axis.
We also developed a VR application in Unity to enhance the virtual soundscapes. The participants could move around in a 360-degree area, equipped with the MoCap detection marker, a smartphone and the Octagon VR goggles (Figure A). We used an FM synthesizer to modulate the sounds to modify pitch, harmonic frequencies, and depths.