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NCSA NEWS |
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Future Directions
"Machine Child" is a composition and performance in VR --
a prototype of an intuitive, highly-interactive, science-based
virtual environment. The work
presents audio tools in a visualization environment
in a way that will make their application more
meaningful to the general public. Bargar says his group is
interested in intelligibility for new users, "so we
didn't create a virtual reality performance as a
magic show to impress people. Instead we decided to
depict a playground -- a Newtonian playground that makes
the intuitive hidden properties of sound clear for
you to observe. It's really a project of outreach and
exploration."
Machine Child was also a prototype for interacting in
a sound-filled environment. Its development helped to
investigate attention to multiple sounds, including the
use of sounds beyond the visual space, and the potential to increase
the complexity of an auditory display
if the user initiates sound changes.
The Audio Development Group is also working on
applications of physically-based models of sound
production. "You have a
numerical model of a plucked string, a column of air
vibrating -- this is an important model because you get
coherent, rather than arbitrary, results." Another
direction the group is investigating is feature
detection for describing different characteristics of
a signal (how much tone versus noise exists in a
signal) which, according to Bargar, is very important
for the new directions in speech recognition software
development.
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