Joe Brailsford

An interactive sound design for Grant Street Theatre that was designed in COVID times as a virtual world travel experience. This proposal includes a custom-built patch in the object oriented program,  Max MSP, designed to manage audio into a 4D sound system.

In early March, shortly after it became evident that the Coronavirus was spreading rapidly around the world, the Australian government imposed a ban on travel in and out of the country. Likely to have been the first time for many Australians that the ability to move freely around the world had been taken away from them. Yet, despite these restrictions affecting the nation as a whole, the mental ramifications have taken their own subjective toil on individuals who hold connection with people or places beyond the geographical constraints of this country.

This period has been fraught with headlines covered with mass psychological fear mongering. Collectively as a species, we have been grieving for the enormous number of people who have lost their lives - 1,268,905 at the time of this submission.  It has felt of utmost importance to remind people that we are in actual fact citizens of the earth, we live on a planet that in its natural state is wild and free, full of wonder and beauty. And if we are able to hold our heads up and remind ourselves of this, it might offer some hope and make the suffering many feel in this moment slightly more bearable.

The closure of our borders has been the underlying motivation to create this interactive sound experience. One that allows the audience to wander the world and immerse themselves in the wild sounds of the seven continents, played through a state of the art 4D sound-system.

Through the combination of sound and our imagination this sound design project hopes to bring the world currently out of reach a little closer to us.