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Ambient sound spaces

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Abstract

We present in this paper a media installation creating in real-time ambient electronic music from a multi-agent simulation by associating agents with sounds. More specifically, we associate various sound parameters with the internal state of an agent at a given time (position, orientation, internal variables, etc.), and therefore the evolution of an agent during the simulation will modify the corresponding soundscape. The sound sources are dynamically spatialized in the actual installation space through several loudspeakers (24 loudspeakers + 1 subwoofer) and modified in real-time, providing thus an ever-changing ambient soundscape. This generative music installation uses Nature-inspired simulations to drive the musical processes, and in particular the swarm intelligence metaphor.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) for partly supporting this research in 2008 at Keio University Research Institute for Digital Media and Content.

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Correspondence to Philippe Codognet.

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Codognet, P., Pasquet, O. Ambient sound spaces. Multimed Tools Appl 58, 355–370 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-010-0666-0

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