I take scary, new technologies and make physical installations that require people to interact with each other to have fun and accomplish some goal. My vision is an overwhelmingly technological future that maintains humanity as its main feature. I arrived at these notions by merging video games with theatre throughout my graduate career.

Collaboration, especially in theater, is essential to the creative process and crucial to the development of interesting art. Different types of collaboration exist in different settings each of which produces a unique result. When collaboration exists among a variety of disciplines, the process becomes cross-disciplinary and gives rise to different collaborative methodologies: multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. For each approach, I provide a detailed definition and describe the role it played in my experiences in the UC San Diego Theater and Dance department.

This paper will present an approach for measuring the reflection impulse response (IR) of various physical materials. Digital signal processing (DSP) techniques are applied to minimize the acoustic influences by the testing environment and test devices, such as speakers, microphones and digital converters. The result IR represents a physical material’s acoustic characteristics and can be used for platforms such as virtual-reality sound generation, acoustic space simulation etc.

I would like to share a personal aesthetic philosophy that has coalesced during my time studying and practicing sound design. This philosophy pertains to the careful transformation and augmentation of the perceived aural environment in a theatrical setting. In my technical process, I organize spatial characteristics in a specific way wherein I categorize groups of loudspeakers based on their unique spatial properties. Combinations of these groups can then be used in various ways to produce complex aural landscapes and achieve a rich sense of space.

This dissertation deals with the topic of spatial audio in the context of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It is separated into three main sections: creating, capturing, and conveying spatial audio. One additional introductory chapter discusses the historical significance of this medium, as well as the psychoacoustic principles exploited. The final chapter summarizes the contributions, motivations, and outline of this dissertation presented in Chapter 1. During my graduate education in New York, I was first exposed to spatial audio as a research topic. During my time in San Diego as a Ph.D. student, I was exposed to the world of open-source software. This dissertation is my attempt at marrying both worlds, describing a framework and methodology rooted in social consciousness and scientific principles for art-making and research. Part of my motivation for writing this dissertation stems from my background as a citizen of an underdeveloped nation: Bolivia. I hope this manuscript can serve as a roadmap for artists and researchers in underprivileged communities interested in the field of spatial audio, and in particular ambisonics.

This thesis will be an analysis of some of my approaches to rendering musical personality to structures in the Pure Data programming environment. The inspiration for this work stems from the desire to make sounds which display autonomous organic characteristics for use in live performance. Examples will be pulled from past works including Aiis (2016) and The Eyes of Seht (2017). The concepts themselves and the design process from which they stem are discussed.

For theatre sound design, detailed planning of networked hardware and software affords a sound designer and the audio crew efficiency and flexibility during the process of rehearsals, designer quiet time, technical rehearsals, and performances. The need to property specify and use networked computers is demonstrated in the corresponding documentation within the portfolio of the sound design for The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. This play, which was produced by the UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance, opened in the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre on November 29, 2015. The audio system and sound design process used current network technologies and practices to automate tasks, provide ease of access and control, and display information with better clarity and speed. The description of my experience as sound designer in this production of The Cherry Orchard, and the included portfolio documentation, is an example for theatre sound designers to take advantage of computer network technologies that are involved in the audio reinforcement system and sound design process of a theatrical production.

The concept for Drums in the Night started with a painting by George Grosz as an inspiration for the last act of the play. It was important to create a soundscape that captured the chaos and brightness that was represented in the painting. Mixing voices that traveled with music that had been heard in previous acts, I experimented bringing the audience into Kragler's mind.

With this expressionistic final act in mind, we explored other moments of suspended realism. During the engagement celebration in Act 2, Anna screams in disbelief as Kragler stumbles into the bar. In this moment of confusion, the drunk party goers become rowdy. The chaos melts away into the background as the lovers become lost in each other. The bar atmosphere transforms into Charles Gounod's Ave Maria.

Anna recounts her nightmares when she believed that Kragler was dead. Kragler asks her to marry him. Before she can make a decision, they are abruptly interrupted. Ave

Maria disappears and the noise of the bar returns.

We added a prologue based on Brecht's Ballad of the Dead Soldier. It tells the story of a soldier who died early in the war. The government decides to dig up the body and re-enlist him to get their full worth of a soldier. I collaborated with the singing actor to create our own version. The soundscape had sounds of destruction layered with deep tones to suggest an ominous environment while the sad melody of the music was sung on top.

Clink. Clank clink. Ink cling clong clang. Cank ling. Ang clang. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clock clink. Click. Click. Click click. Cling. Clink. Clink clock click. Clah cling clah clink. Clag king. Kink. Dink. Dank. Kank. Ka clang, clonk. Konp. Koh kah cloak clock klink donk. Dong kling. Pah. Klong. Kland. Dah koh. Onk. Donk. Dip. Ing dop. Dop drop drip. Drape kape. Drip. Drip. Drim dram. Dip kip. Rim ram. Hop. Hum. Dim. Kum. Dah dape. Dee. Drip. Drop. Krop din. Dink. Rang drahh. Rimmmm. Rahh dip. Doooo. Drum drip. Drip drip. Drip. Drip drrrr. Ahhhh. Ooooooo. Whooo. Ahhhhhhhhhh eee. Ooooo. Uhh. Ooooo. Ahhhhhh. Whahhhh. Whaaahh. Whahh. Wah. Wah wa wa wa. Wha. Whahh. Whahhhh ahhhhhhhhh.

Hearing process exposes the movement of audio; ice melts into a liquid - into a gas of overtones. What is perceived as music and what is perceived as sound emerges into a coexistent designed world of audio, sandbox style. Using Ableton Live, a MIDI controller and keyboard with a MacBook Pro and iPad, I explore the boundaries of sound and music and discover an evolving role in real-time. Listen how the function of audio becomes in conversation with a non-linear form for the interactive space generated.

Hearing process exposes the movement of audio; ice melts into a liquid - into a gas of overtones. What is perceived as music and what is perceived as sound emerges into a coexistent designed world of audio, sandbox style. Using Ableton Live, a MIDI controller and keyboard with a MacBook Pro and iPad, I explore the boundaries of sound and music and discover an evolving role in real-time. Listen how the function of audio becomes in conversation with a non-linear form for the interactive space generated.

Virtual reality as a platform provides untapped potential for the popular music video through its affordance of multisensorial convergence, which aligns with and greatly expands upon the evolution of music as an audiovisual medium. Current popular models for music video representation in virtual spaces utilize many of the unique features afforded by virtual reality including 360 video, audiovisual reactivity, spatialization and interactivity, however, most still act as repeatable experiences tethered to design conventions for two-dimensional digital spaces and ideals related to the archetypal performer-audience dynamic.

This paper explores the potential for music artists to create toward virtual reality by examining the intersection between narrative-based music production and existing music-centered virtual reality experiences, proposing a framework in which emotion, narrative and both mediums iteratively inform each other to create a set of altered design principles for meaningful creation toward this intersectional space.

A series of music-centered virtual reality case studies will be presented to support this argument. Exemplified will be the interactive virtual reality composition “Pigments of Imagination”, a musical piece created by the author with virtual reality as a destination, and thus presented as a narrative journey weaved by and dependent on the technical relationship between compositional, visual, and interactive elements in a virtual space.