1.1

Listen first

Anywhere  ~6 min

Hearing is already spatial. Start with acoustic ecologist Bernie Krause’s three families of sound: geophony (sounds of the earth), biophony (living things) and anthrophony (people and machines), and how to mark a sound on your listening map: position for where, dot size for how loud, a letter for its family.

Then close your eyes for one minute and notice the sounds around you: what is in front or behind, to the side, above or below; near or far, quiet or loud; constant or coming and going; still or moving.

Listen first
8 slides · about 6 min

1.2

Why spatial sound?

At home  ~6 min

We hear in every direction at once, and that is what makes a space feel like a place. Stereo puts sound on the arc between two speakers in front of you; a spatial sound environment joins many speakers so sound can come from anywhere around a visitor. Most venues already have speakers to build on: spatial audio can be additive.

A growing body of research suggests the same thing: the same content, placed spatially, brings more presence, attention and emotional engagement. In Sound Travels’ own research with zoo and aquarium educators, positive sound experiences raised learning engagement noticeably, while negative ones had a much weaker effect. So designing the sounds people enjoy does more than only fixing the ones they don’t.

Why spatial sound?
6 slides · about 6 min

1.3

Imagine the sound environment

At home  ~6 min

Start from the experience you want. Are you in a control room, a jungle, on a boat? Imagine it, and jot down five sounds.

Then sort them with the sound tree. In situ (existing, on-site) sounds are already in the space; designed sounds are added through a system, recorded or synthesized. From here on, three terms: fixed media (a pre-rendered file), generative (made in real time by a music system) and responsive (changes when visitors interact with sensors). Finish with the four parameters of mixing in space, location, time, EQ and volume, and how moving sound can guide visitors.

Imagine the sound environment
7 slides · about 6 min

1.4

Storyboard the visit

At home  ~6 min

Now use your new vocabulary to design. Whether you’re notating the current environment, conceiving a soundscape, or adding new concepts, the goal is a single-page sketch in four steps: the concept and its arc, zones (draw a circle for each), sounds (give each one an address, using one map key for the whole sheet) and the walk (one visitor, stop by stop: attract, hold, release).

We follow one example all the way through: the Shoreline Room, the same shore sixty years apart.

Storyboard the visit
6 slides · about 6 min

1.5

Add the technical overlay

At home  ~4 min

Put a system over the storyboard. You don’t need to have all the technical answers, just clarity on how the content is created and where it’s coming from. Draw where speakers (▮) might go on your map in a second pen color, and mark how each sound plays in your sounds table: # fixed media, ∞ generative, ↻ responsive.

Parts 1.4 and 1.5 come together on one two-page field sheet: your assignment.

Add the technical overlay
5 slides · about 4 min

Worksheets for parts 1.4 and 1.5 · two pages, single-sided is fine. No printer? Copy them onto any paper, or fill them in on a tablet.

1.6

Learn from built examples

At home  ~2 min

Our own immersive works, from generative water soundscapes to sensor-driven ecosystems: Tendrenetic, Self-responsivity within a resonant body, Echosystems, Park Echoes, Pleinair TV, Thirsty Machine, Mirror Glyph and Crickets of Semantra. Each lists its speaker format, so you can read it with your overlay in mind.

Learn from built examples
6 slides · about 2 min