Ryu, Infinite Cemetary

INFINITE CEMETERY: Virtual Reality + Generative Sound

Infinite Cemetery is a poetic, virtual-sound-generation space, driven by user¡¯s interaction data. User¡¯s navigation in virtual cemetery will motivate 3D events and generate real-time spatial sound composition, which explores cognitive aspects of memory and perception in a virtual environment. Full of voice of love letter readings, Infinite Cemetery illustrates an ironical concept of life, bringing spirit to daily objects represented by virtually-rendered objects. It raises question about the meaning of virtual entity, life and memory. MAX/MSP and VIRTOOLS will exchange data through TCP/IP connection, which allows complicated interaction between user, sound and virtual interactive environment.

Credits:

Original concept & 3D virtual space:

Semi Ryu, Kinetic Imaging, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA

Generative sound composition: Claudio Scozzafava

Software plug-in: Stefano Faralli

Multimedialab, University of Rome ¡°La Sapienza¡±, Italy

Technical Statement

Infinite Cemetery is an installation that allows users to navigate through a virtual environment of images and sounds. It is realized as a distributed interactive system, where:

• Virtools is used for graphical rendering and user command interpretation.
• Max/MSP is used to generate a soundtrack.

The two components of the system communicate by exchanging messages (via the TCP/IP channel) using special objects netreceive/netsend for Max/MSP, and special plug-ins appropriately written for the Virtools side. Virtools presents a set of objects placed at fixed coordinates within the virtual space. During navigation, the position of the user's point of view is sent to Max/MSP and used to establish the distance of the user from the objects. The distances from the objects and the absolute position of the user are used for control parameters of music/sound generation.

For example, if the user's point of view is located on the top side of the virtual environment, the sound generated by Max/MSP is "quieter"; on the contrary, placing oneself at the bottom of the virtual space introduces distortions in the sound. A user approaching a Shaman object starts a random extraction of words/phrase from a love letter related to this object, as a reminiscence of the meaning of the virtual entities.

******************************************************* Semi Ryu

Assistant Professor, Kinetic Imaging School of the Arts Virginia Commonwealth University 1000 West Broad st,#105C Richmond, Virginia 23284-3005 804-828-8674 semiryu@empal.com, sryu2@vcu.edu http://www.people.vcu.edu/~sryu2 ******************************************