The end result was an "immersive popup experience" for sustainable clothing brand Pangaia. The location would be an outdoor mall in Los Angeles, but the brief was to transport visitors - primarily using sound - into the wild forests of California.

I used software from Spatial Inc to build the "scene" including the sounds of wind, water, birds, squirrels, deer, thunder, frogs and insects. The Spatial company was in its infancy, so I enjoyed a direct line to developers and designers for advice and even feature requests.

While 3D audio is not completely new, this particular system had some advantages over similar products. For example, it did not require specialised hardware, so I was able to build a test setup in our workshop in Amsterdam using equipment we already had. Translating from the 9.1 speaker setup I had in Amsterdam to the final 12.1 setup in LA (with completely different spatial dimensions) was not a problem.

The Spatial Studio application also allowed me to preview the scene on headphones while moving a virtual listener/character around a 3D space. This was obviously useful for building the scene, but also for remote/online client presentations and approvals. I turned live screen captures of the 3D interface into videos (with sound) and had the client follow the experience on headphones. This really helped to justify the "spatial audio" approach and draw attention to all the little details.

This was looping, non-interactive scene, but involved almost a hundred layered samples and sophisticated animations where sound objects moved and changed apparent "size". I found all the clips from stock libraries, and paid careful attention to getting the right species (of birds, mammals, etc.) for the Californian coastal forest.

More detail at https://random.studio/projects/a-nature-capsule-for-pangaia