Audio

Almost finally; sound. The simplest form of immersion, and potentially the most effective. Sound—delivered through headphones or played by speakers that interrupt the wild track of the city—directs the attention like no other medium in this field. Video is invasive, and obscures with an obvious frame (we’ll amend this chapter when GoogleGlass II is available, and works, and doesn’t make you look like a dork), and sound operates in 360 degrees, not a 20/20 field. Binaural sound spatially transcends stereo, allowing a writer/designer the opportunity to create a genuinely immersed experience.

Circumstance write with sound—we begin sketching our pieces with short fragments of audio that establish a mood, amending and amended by the impact of space and the journey (even as bare, non-specific points to cross through), that then provide a scaffold to rebuild the audio for the final piece. We return to those sketches for new works, or reinvent them with fresh arrangements that better suit the genre and tone we’re aiming for, but it’s sound that starts and ends a process.