Eduardo M C Magalhaes

Games provide high levels of enjoyment and fun through closed systems with concrete objectives. These characteristics enhance a state of concentration known as flow. Many modern board games provide good gaming experiences. However, it is possible to use various resources to further enhance the experience. This study proposes that augmented audio technology can be used to induce flow during a board game playthrough. For this purpose, a prototype was developed to be tested with the board game Rising Sun. The main concept behind this approach was to deliver to the players real time sonic feedback through an augmented sound environment mapped to in game actions, by triggering spatialized contextual sound events related to the user’s in-game actions and game phases. A study was conducted using the aforementioned prototype to validate the proposal, and the results have shown that augmented audio may induce the state of flow.

Games provide high levels of enjoyment and fun through closed systems with concrete objectives. These characteristics enhance a state of concentration known as flow. Many modern board games provide good gaming experiences. However, it is possible to use various resources to further enhance the experience. This study proposes that augmented audio technology can be used to induce flow during a board game playthrough. For this purpose, a prototype was developed to be tested with the board game Rising Sun. The main concept behind this approach was to deliver to the players real time sonic feedback through an augmented sound environment mapped to in game actions, by triggering spatialized contextual sound events related to the user's in-game actions and game phases. A study was conducted using the aforementioned prototype to validate the proposal, and the results have shown that augmented audio may induce the state of flow.

In this paper we describe a study exposing two users to consumergrade virtual reality (VR) for a total of 12 hours. The participants experienced a variety of different commercial VR applications and simulator sickness was measured once every hour for the duration of the study. Both participants experienced varying degrees of sickness throughout the 12 hours of exposure and reported increased sickness seven hours into the study.

Since the beginning of the XXI century, we have been witnessing a significant shift in the media landscape towards enhanced immersive audiovisual manifestations, from controlled research environments to gradual production market penetration. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, 360circ video, and digital games are representative examples of these immersive technologies. Spatial audio design and production are instrumental to the immersive experience. As Ambisonics techniques do potentially mean more expense – in memory, processing power, and production budget –, limited exploration in the development of new composition and production methodologies across popular music production has been considered beyond the traditional stereophonic format. Our work details a postproduction case study using spatial audio, namely High Order Ambisonics. The case study is a Brazilian popular song, remixed using 3rd order Ambisonics from a multitrack recording session composed of monophonic and stereophonic audio tracks. The song encompasses a unique approach for audio spatialization guided by hierarchical audio content attributes across multiple structural time scales and musical contexts. The evaluation of our production process adopted iterative heuristic assessments comparing technical decisions and aesthetic intentions in fostering an augmented spatial audio song. A set of technical guidelines and good practices on how and why to positioning audio in space are abstracted from our case study evaluation, which critically advances the theory and practice of popular musical audio production in immersive technologies.

This paper describes a sound installation designed to increase our aural awareness of animal sounds, aiming to reinstate our natural connection to our own habitat. Based on casual, semantic and reduced listening modes, we developed a sound installation that presents creative aural experiences to enhance our connection to the natural soundscapes by recreating lost or forgotten environments, thus contributing to the preservation of sound memory in the contemporary world. This paper explains the concept and implementation of the installation and offers a discussion of the role of listening in our society and strategies to make it a more conscious act.

1. INTRODUÇÃO O conceito de “presença” é um dos mais relevantes no contexto da realidade virtual. A sensação de presença é muito dependente do estímulo de vários sentidos, tal como acontece na vida real. Embora a evolução dos computadores, placas gráficas e o aumento da oferta de HMDs (Head Mounted Displays) a preços acessíveis e com qualidade aceitável tenham permitido aumentar os níveis de imersão, estes níveis continuam longe do necessário para convencer o utilizador de que realmente está “presente” num ambiente virtual. É sabido que a integração de estímulos de múltiplos sentidos, além dos mais comummente explorados a visão e a audição permite um salto qualitativo na sensação de “presença”.

In this paper we describe a study exposing two users to consumergrade virtual reality (VR) for a total of 12 hours. The participants experienced a variety of different commercial VR applications and simulator sickness was measured once every hour for the duration of the study. Both participants experienced varying degrees of sickness throughout the 12 hours of exposure and reported increased sickness seven hours into the study.

Since the beginning of the XXI century, we have been witnessing a significant shift in the media landscape towards enhanced immersive audiovisual manifestations, from controlled research environments to gradual production market penetration. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, 360 • video, and digital games are representative examples of these immersive technologies. Spatial audio design and production are instrumental to the immersive experience. As Ambisonics techniques do potentially mean more expense-in memory, processing power, and production budget-, limited exploration in the development of new composition and production methodologies across popular music production has been considered beyond the traditional stereophonic format. Our work details a postproduction case study using spatial audio, namely High Order Ambisonics. The case study is a Brazilian popular song, remixed using 3rd order Ambisonics from a multitrack recording session composed of monophonic and stereophonic audio tracks. The song encompasses a unique approach for audio spatialization guided by hierarchical audio content attributes across multiple structural time scales and musical contexts. The evaluation of our production process adopted iterative heuristic assessments comparing technical decisions and aesthetic intentions in fostering an augmented spatial audio song. A set of technical guidelines and good practices on how and why to positioning audio in space are abstracted from our case study evaluation, which critically advances the theory and practice of popular musical audio production in immersive technologies.

The soundscape as an experience and the way the listener can be
integrated into it, constitute central subjects of the chapter by Sousa, Miller, and Magalhães. Through an interactive audio installation, Aural Wandering, the authors
sought to explore an aural cartography of the sounds of the historic center of Porto,
providing participants with a space for self-reflection and awareness of
the preservation of those soundscapes. The authors present a description
detailed description of various aspects of the project, revealing that it constitutes the first
step towards a collaborative experience that involves people and raises questions about the role of communities and their participation.

The growing number of curated and crowdsourced online sound databases has been transforming several branches of music from production to consumption. In this context, the operational basis of sound design practice has been gradually shifting to incorporate repurposing strategies. One of the most pressing matters in this new context is the retrieval and transformation of audio content to meet the creative endeavours of the sound designer. The latter is the focus of our work, which aims to streamline the sound design process in the context of post-production, particularly when adopting large amounts of poorly annotated data. Different methodologies at the crossroads of machine listening and learning (namely, pattern recognition) are adopted to propose the automatic identification of sound events components from soundscape recordings to be repurposed in the temporal and spatial domains. A prototype interface, named AcouRe, implements the proposed methodologies. A heuristic evaluation to assess the usability of AcouRe was conducted by two expert sound designers.

This paper describes a sound installation designed to increase our aural awareness of animal sounds, aiming to reinstate our natural connection to our own habitat. Based on casual, semantic and reduced listening modes, we developed a sound installation that presents creative aural experiences to enhance our connection to the natural soundscapes by recreating lost or forgotten environments, thus contributing to the preservation of sound memory in the contemporary world. This paper explains the concept and implementation of the installation and offers a discussion of the role of listening in our society and strategies to make it a more conscious act.

Neste momento os ambientes virtuais estão a tornar-se numa peça importante nas aplicações centradas no utilizador onde se inclui o treino, design, entretenimento etc. Apesar de percecionarmos o nosso mundo através dos nossos múltiplos sentidos, estas novas aplicações recorrem normalmente principalmente ao estímulo da visão, sendo o som o segundo estímulo mais explorado. Descobertas recentes sugerem que quantos mais sentidos são estimulados num ambiente virtual mais imersivo é a experiência e o desempenho dos utilizadores aumenta (tal como acontece no mundo real). O projeto MASSIVE pretende investigar em detalhe como é que podemos obter um ambiente virtual credível no qual os vários sentidos do utilizador são estimulados de forma a alcançar uma elevada imersividade. Nesse contexto, foi desenvolvido um modelo para a descrição de experiências multissensoriais, a ser usado para representar não só as cenas, como as interações e estímulos do utilizador de forma a suportar contextos de interação multimodal e multissensorial, de forma modular. Esse modelo é apresentado neste artigo, juntamente com um exemplo prático de aplicação, demonstrando a sua relevância.

This paper presents and describes an approach and a methodology for the construction of an open framework and a digital database dedicated to collect, organize and transform the urban sounds of the city of Porto. The project aims at reflecting the sonic identity of the city by means of articulating documental, analytical and social purposes with the artistic transformations of the sound contents.