Ménagerie Imaginaire is a musical piece that takes place in a shared virtual environment. However, this piece is rarely performed in the same fashion, since musical material is arranged throughout space and can be visited in a random and nonlinear manner. We typically perform this piece using real instruments & performers on stage, with avatar representations modelled in a virtual 3D world. The audience sees a rendered visualization of that world on screen and hears all sounds spatialized on a multi-channel audio system. The performers navigate through the scene and interact with spatially localized audio processing. Microphones capture sound from their instruments, and sensors are used to control the direction of audio propagation.

The piece was performed at the conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), in New York ( June 2007) and at the Pure Data Convention in Montreal (August 2007). Unfortunately, there were no quality recordings of these events, so we reproduced the performance and filmed it for the video that you can find below.

For more information about this piece, see the Ménagerie Imaginaire page on Audioscape.org.

A reconstruction of the piece, filmed at La Société des Arts Technologiques (Sept 2007)
Rendered for 5.1 channel surround audio. Please inquire for a DVD copy.

An early prototype (Jan, 2007)

4Dmix³ is an immersive multi-user remixing installation, that uses a ceiling-mounted camera to track many participants moving within a gallery space. The users can see their avatar representations in a mirror-like display, allowing them to localize themselves within a field of virtual sound sources. In fact, a plethora of musical loops are scattered throughout the environment, each of which are phase-locked to match the rhythms of the others.

In the end, the user experiences immersion in a virtual world, where movements guide virtual microphones through a forest of audiovisual sculptures. The sculptures emit sound that feed the users’ mix as he or she travels through through the musical landscape.

See the video below for an idea of how this works, or visit the 4Dmix³ on Audioscape.org.