Auditively warping the virtual space - Virtual reality

In my master thesis I explored aesthetic potentials of designing virtual reality experiences that focus on the auditive perception of space. To do this I designed a VR experience centered around a piece of music, where the individual auditive elements are spatialized using head related transfer functions.

The theoretical starting point of the thesis is a phenomenological understanding of art as a force that can provide insight into our sensory mechanisms by distorting the empirically precise experience: By warping reality as we know it, we can gain insight into how we perceive it. Therefore, the goal of the products was to warp the subjects habitual auditive experience of space so as to expose how this experience normally unfolds.

The VR product was created with Max/MSP/Jitter for the Oculus Development Kit 2. The recording of the product should only be watched with head phones, as the spatialization will have no effect otherwise.