im·mer·sive/iˌmərsiv/ adjective
: providing, involving, or characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something (such as an activity or a real or artificial environment)
: providing, involving, or characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something (such as an activity or a real or artificial environment)
As a researcher at MIT Spatial Sound Lab, I work with Ian Condry, who established the lab founded on the principle that 'innovation thrives when creative minds have space to share, interact, and develop ideas together.' The Lab is a community studio for making immersive sound productions and for researching the social possibilities of immersive audio, especially for public performance. The Lab started in November 2019, thanks to a collaboration with d&b Audiotechnik. We organize workshops, listening sessions, sound events as well as ongoing research, experimentation and production.
Spatial Sound Installations/Events
See Em Why K design studio × MIT SSL x Kyoto Jinpu-an
A living remix of tradition and contemporary culture.
At Kyoto’s Jinpu-an, kaiseki cuisine, tea ceremony, traditional architecture, and a Japanese garden become the setting for a new sensory experience--remixed through digital art and original spatial sound.
A living remix of tradition and contemporary culture.
At Kyoto’s Jinpu-an, kaiseki cuisine, tea ceremony, traditional architecture, and a Japanese garden become the setting for a new sensory experience--remixed through digital art and original spatial sound.
A dialogue between heritage and technology, where centuries-old spaces and contemporary creative practice meet.
What is spatial sound?
Spatial sound goes beyond traditional stereo, using technologies such as object-based audio, ambisonics, wave field synthesis, and immersive playback to create new relationships between sound, space, and listener.
But our interest goes beyond the technology.
Spatial sound goes beyond traditional stereo, using technologies such as object-based audio, ambisonics, wave field synthesis, and immersive playback to create new relationships between sound, space, and listener.
But our interest goes beyond the technology.
“Spatial sound” is an open category that emphasizes multiperspective, multidirectional, spatially sensitive listening.
Exploring the Social Possibilities of Spatial Sound
We ask what happens when sound becomes spatial, multidirectional, and shared.
Most media directs our attention one way: toward a screen, a speaker, a stage. Spatial sound opens up a different possibility. We can hear multiple voices at once, notice sounds behind us, and encounter perspectives we cannot see.
This creates new ways to listen—to artworks, to environments, and to one another.
Our research explores how spatial sound can encourage more active, open-ended forms of listening, where different people may hear and interpret the same space differently. Through experiments in listening, playback, performance, and spatialization, we investigate how new sound environments might create new ways of relating to each other and the world around us.
We ask what happens when sound becomes spatial, multidirectional, and shared.
Most media directs our attention one way: toward a screen, a speaker, a stage. Spatial sound opens up a different possibility. We can hear multiple voices at once, notice sounds behind us, and encounter perspectives we cannot see.
This creates new ways to listen—to artworks, to environments, and to one another.
Our research explores how spatial sound can encourage more active, open-ended forms of listening, where different people may hear and interpret the same space differently. Through experiments in listening, playback, performance, and spatialization, we investigate how new sound environments might create new ways of relating to each other and the world around us.
Spatial Sound, Human Agency, and Real-World Applications
Our research asks how spatial sound can become a tool for communication, learning, creativity, and human interaction—and how these technologies can be applied beyond conventional research environments.
At MIT, this work has connected scientific research with artists, educators, and public-facing experiences through initiatives such as Dissolve Music @ MIT, a recurring spatial sound showcase that has featured artists including Mouse on Mars.
The broader opportunity is to connect research and creative technology with institutions, education, cultural production, and public engagement—creating experiences that make complex ideas more accessible, participatory, and meaningful. We are particularly interested in how these approaches can contribute to more sustainable ways of producing and experiencing culture, where knowledge, creativity, and technology can be shared across disciplines and communities.
Spatial Sound Lab — Events
Mouse on Mars at Dissolve Music
Our research asks how spatial sound can become a tool for communication, learning, creativity, and human interaction—and how these technologies can be applied beyond conventional research environments.
At MIT, this work has connected scientific research with artists, educators, and public-facing experiences through initiatives such as Dissolve Music @ MIT, a recurring spatial sound showcase that has featured artists including Mouse on Mars.
The broader opportunity is to connect research and creative technology with institutions, education, cultural production, and public engagement—creating experiences that make complex ideas more accessible, participatory, and meaningful. We are particularly interested in how these approaches can contribute to more sustainable ways of producing and experiencing culture, where knowledge, creativity, and technology can be shared across disciplines and communities.
Spatial Sound Lab — Events
Mouse on Mars at Dissolve Music
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SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY
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SPATIAL SOUND + MUSIC + ART
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DESIGN THINKING + CREATIVE PRACTICE
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HUMAN EXPERIENCE + INTERACTION
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LEARNING + PARTICIPATION
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CULTURE + COMMUNITY + PLACE
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┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR A │
│ SUSTAINABLE FUTURE │
└─────────────────────────────┘
│
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SPATIAL SOUND + MUSIC + ART
│
▼
DESIGN THINKING + CREATIVE PRACTICE
│
▼
HUMAN EXPERIENCE + INTERACTION
│
▼
LEARNING + PARTICIPATION
│
▼
CULTURE + COMMUNITY + PLACE
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR A │
│ SUSTAINABLE FUTURE │
└─────────────────────────────┘
Spatial Sound: Practice + Research
SRCFLP explores spatial sound through creative practice, experimentation, and practice-based research—using sound, music, audiovisual media, and interface design to investigate new ways of listening, interacting, performing, and experiencing shared spaces.
Space Invader
Spatial sound as social and audiovisual experience.
An ongoing project exploring the intersection of spatial sound, audiovisual storytelling, social practice, and live performance.
Developed through both museum installations and club-based events, Space Invader uses immersive 4.1 sound, moving image, and real-time musical improvisation to transform shared spaces into environments for listening, seeing, and interacting differently.
At its core, Space Invader is interested in who gets heard, how stories are told, and how technology can create new conditions for human connection. The project has engaged with themes including marginalization, cultural identity, xenophobia, displacement, and empowerment, using music and audiovisual media not simply as entertainment, but as tools for bringing different experiences and perspectives into a shared space.
The visual component plays an important role in this process. Rather than treating visuals as decoration for music, Space Invader uses audiovisuals as a form of storytelling—creating images, environments, and visual narratives that can frame, challenge, or expand what is being heard. Sound and image can operate independently, overlap, contradict one another, or create new associations in the listener.
Spatial sound adds another dimension to this storytelling. By moving beyond conventional stereo, the project experiments with where sound comes from, how it moves through a space, and how people orient themselves within it. Multiple sound sources can coexist around the listener, encouraging active listening and allowing different sonic elements, voices, and perspectives to be encountered from different positions.
This approach extends from gallery and museum environments into nightlife and club culture, where immersive sound and audiovisual experiences can become social spaces for gathering, participation, and exchange. The club is not treated simply as a venue for entertainment, but as a place where different communities can meet, encounter unfamiliar perspectives, and temporarily share the same physical and sonic environment.
Dynamic Performance System
Interface design as an extension of creative practice and research.
The Dynamic Performance System (DPS) grew out of SRCFLP's ongoing practice-based research into how technology can support real-time musical decision-making, spatial interaction, and improvisation. Rather than developing a fixed technical solution, the system evolves alongside the performance practice itself—an ongoing process of making, playing, observing, and redesigning.
Through this approach, SRCFLP develops the interface as part of the creative practice: exploring how physical controls, spatial sound, audiovisual elements, and human gestures can work together in live performance. Each iteration becomes an opportunity to test what supports intuitive interaction, what enables meaningful musical decisions, and where technology can remain responsive to the performer rather than determining the performance in advance.
Following the earlier quadraphonic event at the Somerville Museum block party, Version 3 of DPS represents the next stage of this research.
The current iteration focuses on refining the interface for practical use in live improvisation, continuing a cycle of
practice → experimentation → interface design → performance → refinement.
In this sense, DPS is not simply a piece of equipment. It is an evolving research-through-practice project, developed through SRCFLP's work in the lab and tested through real-world performance and social contexts.
Spatial sound as social and audiovisual experience.
An ongoing project exploring the intersection of spatial sound, audiovisual storytelling, social practice, and live performance.
Developed through both museum installations and club-based events, Space Invader uses immersive 4.1 sound, moving image, and real-time musical improvisation to transform shared spaces into environments for listening, seeing, and interacting differently.
At its core, Space Invader is interested in who gets heard, how stories are told, and how technology can create new conditions for human connection. The project has engaged with themes including marginalization, cultural identity, xenophobia, displacement, and empowerment, using music and audiovisual media not simply as entertainment, but as tools for bringing different experiences and perspectives into a shared space.
The visual component plays an important role in this process. Rather than treating visuals as decoration for music, Space Invader uses audiovisuals as a form of storytelling—creating images, environments, and visual narratives that can frame, challenge, or expand what is being heard. Sound and image can operate independently, overlap, contradict one another, or create new associations in the listener.
Spatial sound adds another dimension to this storytelling. By moving beyond conventional stereo, the project experiments with where sound comes from, how it moves through a space, and how people orient themselves within it. Multiple sound sources can coexist around the listener, encouraging active listening and allowing different sonic elements, voices, and perspectives to be encountered from different positions.
This approach extends from gallery and museum environments into nightlife and club culture, where immersive sound and audiovisual experiences can become social spaces for gathering, participation, and exchange. The club is not treated simply as a venue for entertainment, but as a place where different communities can meet, encounter unfamiliar perspectives, and temporarily share the same physical and sonic environment.
Dynamic Performance System
Interface design as an extension of creative practice and research.
The Dynamic Performance System (DPS) grew out of SRCFLP's ongoing practice-based research into how technology can support real-time musical decision-making, spatial interaction, and improvisation. Rather than developing a fixed technical solution, the system evolves alongside the performance practice itself—an ongoing process of making, playing, observing, and redesigning.
Through this approach, SRCFLP develops the interface as part of the creative practice: exploring how physical controls, spatial sound, audiovisual elements, and human gestures can work together in live performance. Each iteration becomes an opportunity to test what supports intuitive interaction, what enables meaningful musical decisions, and where technology can remain responsive to the performer rather than determining the performance in advance.
Following the earlier quadraphonic event at the Somerville Museum block party, Version 3 of DPS represents the next stage of this research.
The current iteration focuses on refining the interface for practical use in live improvisation, continuing a cycle of
practice → experimentation → interface design → performance → refinement.
In this sense, DPS is not simply a piece of equipment. It is an evolving research-through-practice project, developed through SRCFLP's work in the lab and tested through real-world performance and social contexts.
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Setting up DPS-3 and visual projection system
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Performing on the quadraphonic 4.1 sound system, combined with live drumming
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