A CROSS-MODAL ENHANCED MULTI-DIMENTIONAL VISUALIZATION

Martinussen, Linda

4. term

Medialogy, Master

2007

2007-06-21

68 pages

Virtual environments are useful in enhancing the feeling of being present in an illusion even though the physical environment is completely different. This focus of this project is to research in how a higher level of presence in visualizations can be evoked by utilizing virtual animations and spatialized audio, which together represent a visual-audio relationship in a cross-modal enhancement. Three setups were tested on twelve subjects. One setup had no audio, setup 2 included stereo sounds and the last setup was using spatialized audio with eight speakers. All setups used a back projected screen, size 2,5m x 2,5m. The subjects were given the same task to create a focus for the exploration. The scenario for the visualization is an indoor arena, containing random positioned audience, which is applied random behaviour and appearance. The audio design is utilizing 3D panning and reverberation obtained by the RVBAP object to create spatialized audio. The audio behaviour is controlled by the visualization through OSC objects. The tests were designed as within-subjects and ANOVA was chosen as the analysis approach supported by comparing the average of the raw test data. The results expressed that Control factors, Sensory factors and audio cues created presence, but not under the same conditions. The unpredictable individual state of mind of the subjects in addition with a low amount of test subjects and slow navigation options produced unclear results to some extend.

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