Series: The Architecture of Presence - Part 2 Building Universes from Code: The Acoustic Materiality as part of the series "The Architecture of Presence" In a forest, sound behaves differently than it does in a cathedral. The leaves absorb high frequencies; the stone walls reflect them, creating a complex web of reverberations that tell you exactly what the world is made of. This is the "materiality" of sound. In virtual reality, if we want a world to feel lived-in, we have t

Series: The Architecture of Presence - Part 1 Building Universes from Code: The Geometry of Sound in the series "The Architecture of Presence" Pt 1 In the physical world, sound is our primary sense for locating ourselves in the dark. It is a product of vibrations moving through matter, reflecting off surfaces, and arriving at our ears with tiny, micro-second differences in timing. Our brains are remarkable biological computers; they take these discrepancies and calculate the