Sound Fountain

Project Sound Fountain aims to create a three dimensional sound environment where musicians can showcase their work while providing a degree of interactivity to the listener. Sam Garner was an undergraduate musician at the University of Texas at Arlington who had helped out with compositions for several games. When he asked me to make some sort of interactive sound portfolio, I thought it was the perfect chance to experiment. Music tends to be a supportive art form that simulates thinking in our everyday lives. We listen to music when we drive our cars, work on projects, study for tests, and at social gatherings. Creating music videos or sound visualizers provide visuals that focus the audiences attention solely on the music. Integrating interactivity into a sound portfolio can be a double edge sword. Interactivity enhances the users involvement, increasing focus. But if the interactivity isnt directly addressing the sound, the focus can shift to the interaction itself and the sound can become background noise.

Immersion is what happens when the users focus is drawn into the virtual space through interactivity. The users sense of space transitions from the real world to the virtual. Many different aspects of a virtual space can decrease the depth of immersion, such as glitches, level of detail, unrealistic behavior, and user interfaces. User interfaces are two dimensional screens the interrupt the three dimensional world, allowing the player to control various settings related to that world. This interruption reminds the user that they are not really inside this virtual space. That is why all user interfaces are built into the virtual space. Users can change the music and the adjacent particle system by interacting with the console in three dimensional space. These controls tailor the three dimensional sound visualizer to each users personal preference.

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