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About

Introduction

New Atlantis is a shared (multi-user) online virtual world dedicated to audio experimentation and practice. Unlike most online worlds where image is the primary concern, in New Atlantis sound comes first.

New Atlantis provides a context for new-media students to showcase research projects that explore the relationship between sound, virtual 3D image and interactivity. It offers a pedagogical platform for audiographic animation, real-time sound synthesis, object sonification and acoustic simulation. It is a place to organize virtual sound installations, online concerts, soundwalks and other audio visual art experiences.

The name New Atlantis comes from the title of a Utopian novel by Philosopher Francis Bacon, 1627 (ref) which describes a legendary island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, dotted with extraordinary audio phenomena that might be considered as premonitory of todays electronic and digital audio techniques. We have adopted some of Bacon’s ideas and nomenclature to create classes for the virtual world such as “Sound Houses”, “Sound Pipes”, “Trunks” and “Helps”.

In New Atlantis all elements have (by default) audio qualities: spaces resonate, surfaces reflect and collisions activate the multiple sounds of the objects involved. In addition we have created custom objects such as “Sound Trunks” where visitors can leave a recording or a voice object whereby a visitor can detach his or her voice (from navigation) and use it to make a distant space resound.

A collection of purpose built scripts implement low level sound synthesis and multiple parameter interactivity enabling the creation of complex sound sources and environments linked to animation or navigation in the visual scene.

Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis is a model for the role of science and art in society which places education at the heart of culture. Our project emphasis discovery, cultural exchange, experimentation, learning and knowledge forward in an educational and creative environment.

NA history

The premises of the New Atlantis project go back to 2005 when the Locus Sonus (ESA Aix) and SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) were awarded FACE funding for an academic and research exchange program. ENSCI, through Roland Cahen, has been associated with the project since the early stages of development.

The first experiments in 3d audio-graphy took place in Second Life, using Pure Data as an audio engine. The process involved sending html commands from second life to an external server which did the audio synthesis and streamed the result back to second life. This system worked well enough to convince us that it was worth while pursuing the development of sophisticated audio features for virtual environments, however, it was difficult to implement and the delay due to streaming was problematic. The decision was made to build our own multi user world using Panda 3d with Pure Data bundled as an audio engine. This first version of New Atlantis was developed during multiple workshops that took place in Chicago and Aix en Provence between 2007 and 2011 The project involved a relatively complex path finding system to calculate acoustics and custom built client server software. The development process took a considerable amount of time and the although a working version was tested successfully during a workshop at ENSAB (2011), it was decided to abandon the system in favor of Unity3d, a more recent and efficient platform offering more scope for audio programming.

Visit New Atlantis

Architecture

New Atlantis can be accessed via a web viewer or as a standalone application. It is organized as scenes that can be accessed independently but that share the same basic principles of navigation and specific scripts. Multi-user it can be shared by several players at the same time making it suitable for group playing in both the gaming and the musical sense of the word.
Every registered user can create and host individual or shared scenes which he or she can decide to make persistent or not.

At the time of writing, we are working on a limited number of public scenes that can contain multiple “Sound Houses” (architectural elements with specific acoustics). These can be visited by navigating through the scene, their audio however is not necessarily limited to the immediate proximity of the building. This means that sounds can be heard from a distance, thus they mix together and the placing of and navigation between sound objects can be considered as a musical experience. In these public scenes users can interact with one another and with shared objects.

Another special feature inspired by Bacon’s text “Sound Pipes” allows the transmission of audio to and from a remote location. The underlying geography and urban layout –loosely inspired by descriptions and drawings relating to the various versions of Atlantis from Plato onwards– has been designed to accommodate a variety of architectural aesthetics allowing a degree of liberty of expression for the artists and students currently involved in the project.

Events

Activity

New Atlantis project is not only about creating a multi user virtual universe, but also to make it together while learning. It is experimental, creative and educative. Each new opportunity to develop New Atlantis happens within workshops, courses or events gathering art schools students, from different places working together at a distance. It is a way to initiate ubiquitous working groups of students for immaterial non local and shared art creation.

Projected Performance Event

A public presentation of New Atlantis is planned mid January 2016. For this first “demo” we propose to adopt a performance format where the visual scene is presented on a big screen behind the player or players and audio is amplified over a professional sound system. We consider that this DJ VJ or concert arrangement reinforces and focuses attention on the audio and musical specificity of the world. The performance consists of a multi user, online improvisation where participants from each partner institution, meet in New Atlantis to play together. Possible venues include Le Cube (Issy les Moulineaux), the Neimann Center in Chicago (SAIC), the EMPAC Center at RPI, Gaité Lyrique in Paris and Fondation Vasarely in Aix en Provence.