New Atlantis: Audio Experimentation in a Shared Online World

Abstract

Computer games and virtual worlds are "traditionally" visually orientated, and their audio dimension often secondary. In this paper we will describe New Atlantis a virtual world that aims to put sound first. We will describe the motivation, the history and the development of this Franco-American project and the serendipitous use made of the distance between partner structures. We explain the overall architecture of the world and discuss the reasons for certain key structural choices. New Atlantis' first aim is to provide a platform for audio-graphic design and practice, for students as well as artists and researchers, engaged in higher education art or media curricula. We describe the integration of student's productions through workshops and exchanges and discuss and the first public presentations of NA that took place from January 2016. Finally we will unfold perspectives for future research and the further uses of New Atlantis.

Music in Extended Realities

“…This system made use of pre-scripted avatar movements to trigger sound samples within the virtual world. The New Atlantis project features a multi-user networked musical design and development environment -built within the Unity game engine and featuring a highly customized set of auxiliary audio and control scripts and classes -optimized for musical performance across wide area networks [132].…”