of the work ‘Being Hungry’ composed by Tineke De Meyer and Duncan Speakman. Being Hungry was written at the beginning of spring as some of us entered lockdown. Inspired by the book Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach, it imagines a small group of people that decided to devote themselves to the practice of just walking, a passion for moving around without distinctive aim [1].

We, at the IPEM research lab of Ghent University [2], tried to reimagine this work by spatializing the different audio layers using trajectories designed in virtual reality. Trajectories were generated using random walk equations and enriched with gestures, hand-draw in virtual space or recorded from algorithmic swarm patterns.

Our work and the final performance took place in our Art-Science-Interaction-Lab [3] where we used Ambisonics to move sound objects from each musical layer. We present two digital copies of our lab in which we present the reimagined composition on the left and the virtual reality tool we developed on the right. Ambisonics audio is mixed-down to a binaural mix so for a natural listening experience, the listener should stand in the middle of the lab on the left, facing the video-screen.

[1] www.dspk.bandcamp.com/album/the-house-was-alright

[2] www.ugent.be/lw/kunstwetenschappen/ipem/en

[3] www.ugent.be/lw/kunstwetenschappen/ipem/en/services/asil

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~rob/xrmusic/xr_programnotes.html