This immersive audio environment explores how humans react to commands imposed by a machine generating its acoustic stimuli on the basis of tracked body movement. In this environment, different states of human and machine action are understood as a balance of power that moves back and forth between the apparatus and the human being. This system is based on spatial sounds that are designed to stimulate body movements, which are considered as measurement of how successfully the machine is controlling the human.
Sound has been used in various ways to affect peoples behavior systematically. The brand Muzak, a company that engineers sound to achieve psychoacoustic effects on listeners, became a generic term for background music in the U.S. Used in offices, workers tend to get more done, more efficiently, and feel happier, used in public spaces, it scares people away from loitering.
Lev Manovich analyzed this phenomenon of audience manipulation, where the subject is put within a structure very similar to an experimental setup of a psychological laboratory" as a basic, but mostly overlooked component in interactive media. The proposed project takes this phenomenon as its subject, exploring it with the use of spatial sound.