Tascott hill

This walk is an interactive auditory experience that incorporates the unique abilities of spatial audio systems to allow users to become a part of the music-making process. By laying out musical elements or ‘stems’ around an environment, the user can control how the music sounds, triggering different sounds at different times to create unique sonic experiences for each user and each walk. As the user ascends the hill, musical elements are introduced, allowing the user to control the complexity of the music by moving up and down the environment. The user gets a growing sense of unease and anxiety within the walk as they ascend, the overlapping musical layers clashing and building tension, mirroring the physical nature of a sloping landscape, topped with a calm and serene plateau at the peak of the hill serving as a respite from the unfamiliar alien sounds heard along the walk. The sound of birds at the peak is the only natural sound in the whole piece, reaffirming its role as a representation of familiarity and comfort. By deliberately creating phase interference, unique relationships between sound sources are created, leading to even two walks along the same path creating novel experiences as when specific sounds are triggered affects how the phase of one sound source interacts with others.

As the user approaches the bottom of the hill, the first musical layer comes in: a smooth gliding synth with slight distortion and a lilting quality, setting the mood for the walk. All of the sound sources have a slow attack and are generally nonrhythmic, which allows for unique spatial timings of each sound without creating an unpleasant beat misalignment. This is an aspect that differentiates spatial compositions from more traditional ones, where not only is the experience different for everyone in an emotional sense, but also is literally unique because the user has input into the sequence in which the audio is presented. As the user continues up the hills, multiple different synth layers play and begin to overlap, creating a creepy ambient atmosphere. The walk is designed to be completed slowly, taking time to walk back between different sections to create new and interesting combinations of sound sources, listening to them repeat and interact with the others at different timings to create entirely new moods.

Once the user has reached the peak of the hill, the walk can also be done backward, juxtaposing the rising tension of walking up the hill with a slow descent, beginning at the epoch of all the sound sources and slowly removing layers until the user is left with only a single, creeping synth at the base of the hill, now mirroring the birds at the crest of the hill, creating a sense of finality and rest from the chaotic sounds of the walk.

This walk aims to be a bridge between the physical reality of movement through a space and the sensory reality of sound design and musical composition. The audio of the walk serves as an auditory reconstruction of the physicality of climbing a hill, with the crest and the bottom being more calm and stable, whereas the journey up the hill, specifically the middle has the most physical motion, which the walk auditorally reflects through the increasingly complex musical layers. In addition, the inherent intractability of a spatial audio medium permits a unification of physical movement in space and subjective emotional experience, brought about by auditory experience, such as how the speed of the walk influences the subjective emotional experience; a fast walk up the hill is quick and intense, while a slow walk permits more time between the introduction of new elements, creating a less jarring experience.