I began the lab with the basic ambience – starting with the lights.

Probably the most striking and noticeable part of the lab are the bright fluorescent orange lights. I immediately thought of street lamps, with their quite buzzy sound. I used my fridge which makes a light drone and recorded it.

To this, I added various clanging and taps and looped it in the background mixing it low so as not to overrule other sounds. I also then added fan sounds and ventilation audio for the overall background ambience and got the basic lab atmos overall.

After creating the atmosphere, I tried to keep the overall sound design for the Lab very minimal to reflect the clean and empty nature of Masters’s surroundings. I wanted the environment to reflect Master’s characteristics too, as I had done with the voice.

I added Masters’s voice and layered it over the atmosphere, adding reverb and echo to reflect the large but enclosed space. Thinking about the sound in 3 dimensions was also interesting – it is very similar to installation, where you think about how sound will sound in a certain space and the positionality of the audience/ player in relation to the sound.

I then added sounds such as footsteps and computer beeps I sampled from sounds on my computer and elevators that I pitched up. As the lab is the initial introduction to Master, I used the sounds of scraping the piano strings in the performance lab, pitching it down and adding an echo as a motif for his presence. I also added a dark sub bass almost as a theme tune for Master, which I felt worked well together with the voice bringing the character’s personality to life.

The fact that VR can be used to simulate environments that appear “real” but are not brings up questions of ethics – as with most things that can reflect realism. A virtual world. Users are able to place themselves into different bodies temporarily, changing their background and identity for the period of time they are in virtual reality. Do the same rules still apply in a virtual world?

In augmented reality (AR), virtual elements are added to the real world via a device (for example, goggles or a smartphone), and the information provided frequently uses the user’s actual location. For example, when visiting some ruins, one may notice a representation of what the place used to look like overlaid over the ruins. This is useful for historical representations as well as educational objectives (for example architects and engineers).

“…he argued that it is a fundamental moral principle “that human beings have a duty to treat other persons with respect, that is, to treat them as ends and not as means, or to do to them as one would expect to be treated by others oneself.” But does this apply to virtual characters? He gave two arguments suggesting that it does. First, following Kant in relation to treatment of animals, we should treat virtual characters with respect because if not we may end up treating people badly too (note that this is a philosophical rather than an empirical argument). Second, if we treat virtual characters with disrespect or act violently toward them, this may actually cause psychological harm to people that those characters might represent. ”

(Slater et al., 2020)

For this week’s tutorial, I was unable to really show any visual media the group had worked on as we were not given a video yet, however, I worked with the prompt given to me by the games design students for the background music and received positive feedback. Going forward I will have the ambience for the lab and other sounds complete.

A VR game known as the Lab features a lab like an environment at the beginning. For our game, the laboratory environment featuring master feels very similar – spacious, clean and sonically containing a lot of reverberation. This helped me with the overall ambience of the lab.

This game also features a lab environment, with futuristic sound effects, music, foley and ambience to reflect a machine and high tech environment. I really like how each tiny little movement has a sound effect, even the moving of the object – especially in places where they didn’t have to, adding further detail and immersiveness to the game. The moving cube within the game actually SOUNDS like it has weight to it as it thumps to the ground. Pangobot media – the sound designers for the game used FMOD.

A session where we discussed how we wanted the voices to sound. One of the most challenging parts of the entire process of the sound design as non of us were voice actors. However, we drew from the inspiration given to us, such as The Master from Doctor Who, as well as animal crossing animalese for the Oins. At one point, the Oins where supposed to sound mumbled, but we changed that idea for a more low pitched realistic voice. The microphone was set up in a 45 degree angle formation for panning effects later on.

3 CONDITIONS CREATE A SENSE OF IMMERSION IN A VIRTUAL REALITY OR 3-D COMPUTER:

1. The user’s expectations of the game or environment must match the environment’s conventions fairly closely:

For this, I made sure the sounds I used fit the scene, using both diegetic and non-diagetic sounds for the atmosphere. This can be a tricky scenario to work with sometimes as a game is very unrealistic and out of the ordinary, none the less, for a small sense of realism needed, sounds for the lab such as familiar computer beeping or lights added a sense of familiarity, allowing the user to feel the first-person nature of the game.

2. The user’s actions must have a non-trivial impact on the environment:

Personally, this area feels like more of a gameplay aspect rather than a sound design aspect, as the physical actions in the game are dependant on the characters and gameplay itself. none-the less I tried to aid the sense of importance with both the voice acting of the villain (done in a serious yet lighthearted tone) as well as the sounds at atmosphere of interactable objects fitting the intended use.

3.3.The conventions of the world must be consistent, even if they don’t match those of “Meatspace”

For the sound, i feel like especially for a video game, using the same sound for objects that provide the user with a sense of accomplishment allow them to want to keep playing for the sense of gratification.

Sampling is a key element of so many musical genres and a vital part of a few. Some genres such as Hip-hop rely heavily on sampling to produce the music itself. From a musical perspective – a producer usually just picks what sounds good to them, however from a soundarts perspective the origin of the sound itself and the culture in which the sound originated plays a vital role in the perspectives of colonialism and appropriation.

Sound transformation has grown into a massive field that barely approaches the infinite throughout time. Sounds may be modified in a variety of ways and using a variety of tools. Aside from that, the many ways to capture sounds and the diversity of technologies that allow us to acquire auditory information from the environment change at such a rapid pace that we can never cease discovering new ways to make, listen to, record, and analyse sound.

Assuming  that the definition for sonic transformation is any change made to a sound in order to create a new item. It might be due to the story, the many aspects you assign to it, its significance, emotional or musical traits, context, and so on. Sound effects are virtually always modified with the story in mind in the field of sound design. To produce aural metaphors, generate suspense, pose questions to the audience, modify realities, impact the attributes of a character, recreate a period, and tell a tale, field recording material is processed and modified. All of these decisions establish an intriguing relationship between technology and narrative, and the growth of tools opens up additional potential for new discoveries.

Looking at different techniques in which sound has been used to further connect context:

Looking at this piece, the use of cutting and editing in this created.a totally different narrative is special, especially with the context behind Nixons presidency. It presents not only an almost sonic “invocation” of nuanced sound editing but an act of a political nature used to highlight an issue within the sound arts realm.

Another interesting form of sound art in the form of sonic journalism. The use of documentation of a wider perceived context is very interesting – even without knowing the context or from where the sound is derived. In a journalistic context however the context further helps develop the piece bringing a real grounded sense of presence.