Responsive Open Space: Sound and image in public spaces

Responsive Open Space (ROS) is a performative spatial environment integrating audio-visual composition responsive to the engagement of participants among themselves. In an interdisciplinary collaboration architects, artists, composers and computer vision specialists developed an environment where participants can enter, move around, and - through interaction with each other - experience different fragments of a spacesensitive soundscape and its visual representation (sonification). The space consists of a kinetic architectural construction of projections screen hanging over participants to allow free movement within the room. The screen surfaces and shapes are designed to effect participants\´ vision. Each screen is movable, reacting to the participants\´ movement, and aligned with the visual projections. The system uses a high-end tracking system in order to reliably track multiple participants. The closeness of the participants to one another determines the size of their projection-scope. When two individuals meet both their according projections and acoustic tracks are melted together and only one remains, when they part both are separated into their own visualized soundscape again. The technical background consists of four components: (1) The tracking system on an infrared basis in order to exclude distractions from the projections and detect only people in the open space, (2) The “information cloud” above: the visual surface, a combination of light-weight movable elements, serving as projection screens and allowing participants to move freely in the room, (3) the soundscape, generating acoustic "relational feedback" of the movements in the space, and lastly (4) the immersive environment, the visualization itself, i.e. the implementation and integration of all included components.