Simulacre

Synopsis

Simulacre is an a sonic automata, where awkward tiny machines (sounds, textures, whispering and ghosly voices) are disposed pseudo-randomely around a listener, move and oscillate mecanically, enveloping him, sometimes trying to communicate.

It tries to depict the cold, dark, virtual space of a digital phantasma, the distorded reality of an active imagination state, where consciousness delve into subconscious images, feelings, memories of sensations, people and project an 'artificial' emotional response, recollected from an interpretation.

Implementation

The movement of the sound is mapped to the visual position in the 2d space. Playing state, intensity amplitude, and also the elevation are mapped to the radius of a sound object.

Depending on your configuration the sounds may be spatialised using the Google Resonance SDK (using their 3rd order ambisonic + binaural renderer) or using the standard WebAudio HRTF PannelNode (still binaural).

Browser Support

It was only tested (and developed) on a Mac, so i cannot tell for Windows. I advice to use Chrome (last version), Firefox -should- be fine, and the last version of Safari may also support it, although it does not use the resonance SDK (not supported properly, replaced by the HRTF Panner + convolution reverb to cheat the space) and may also cause strange behaviours. Not tested and adviced on other browsers.

I apologize for the people who may not be able to ear/see it. A video might be uploaded to demonstrate it.

p5js was used for the visualisation.