Cubing the Sphere | Mixed Reality Installation
Cubing the Sphere is a mixed reality installation developed in collaboration with Dave Stitch, combining spatial audio, digital sculpture and audience interaction across augmented and virtual reality platforms.
The project explores how movement through space can become a compositional tool. Rather than presenting a fixed artwork, visitors navigate a series of virtual sound sculptures whose audio responds dynamically to proximity, position and interaction. As audiences move through the environment, they actively shape their own audiovisual experience.
Originally developed for VRHAM! Festival, Hamburg, the work proposed a distributed network of spatial audio sculptures situated throughout the city. Presented through augmented reality and immersive virtual environments, the installation invited participants to explore, listen and construct unique pathways through a responsive audiovisual landscape.
At the centre of the project was a simple question: how can audience movement become an active component of the artwork itself? Through spatial listening, digital sculpture and participatory interaction, Cubing the Sphere investigated new relationships between sound, space and collective experience.
Cubing the Sphere established themes that continue throughout my practice today, including spatial perception, audience participation and responsive environments. Many of the ideas first explored through this project have since evolved into immersive installations where light, sound and environmental systems respond directly to the presence and activity of visitors.
Sound Design: Dave Stitch
Creative Direction: Andy Harper
VR Development: Dave Stitch / Andy Harper
Lighting and Installation: Karl Wustrau (ST FX)
Festival: VRHAM! Festival, Hamburg, Germany
Platform: Hubs (VR), iOS (AR)
Creative Direction: Andy Harper
VR Development: Dave Stitch / Andy Harper
Lighting and Installation: Karl Wustrau (ST FX)
Festival: VRHAM! Festival, Hamburg, Germany
Platform: Hubs (VR), iOS (AR)
Ziggurat Vital (Low Frequencies)
Ziggurat Dex7 (Mid Frequencies)
Ziggurat 8plinx (Hi Frequencies)
Augmented Reality
The augmented reality component presented a series of virtual sound sculptures within public space. Visitors could approach, navigate and interact with each work, creating shifting spatial compositions through movement and proximity.
AR Access: tinyurl.com/hemwe68x
Virtual Reality
The virtual reality environment expanded these ideas into a fully immersive spatial experience, allowing visitors to explore sound, sculpture and visual form within a navigable digital landscape.VR Access: hub.link/fnK5Xgx (VR room code 647399)
Click the above image to experience this in VR
Location of all 8 speakers for full 8d sound in VR
Squaring the circle is a the challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps. Cubing the sphere is the 3d equivalent
Cubing the Sphere is an immersive virtual installation exploring eight-directional spatial audio and visualised frequencies. The project distributes sound across the eight corners of a cubic space, transforming audio data into animated three-dimensional forms that respond to spatial relationships and movement.
The installation explores how audiences can actively shape their own experience through navigation and listening. Combining spatial audio, digital sculpture and immersive media, the work established early investigations into participation, perception and responsive environments that continue throughout my practice today.
Click the above image to experience this in VR
Cubing the Sphere - Project Development
Project Development
Originally developed for presentation at VRHAM! Festival, Hamburg, Cubing the Sphere proposed a distributed network of spatial audio sculptures situated throughout the city. Using augmented reality and eight-directional sound, the project invited audiences to navigate public space through movement, participation and listening.
Virtual sculptures positioned within parks, plazas and cultural sites would respond to visitor proximity, creating unique audiovisual compositions shaped by each participant's journey through the environment. The proposal explored how public space might function as a responsive instrument, transforming audience movement into an active component of the artwork.
While the wider physical realisation was curtailed by pandemic restrictions, the project established themes that continue throughout my practice today, including spatial perception, collective experience and responsive environments.
By removing the camera function in AR & wearing headphones, the focus shifts to exploring and discovering hidden sounds in a physical space. There is scope for performing artists to compose a track through movement alone.
This is not just limited to performing artists, the AR experience is accessible and available to anyone that can hold a phone in one hand. The experience is not just immersive for the user, it could be broadcast to a crowd with a simple bluetooth speaker.
Participation through movement creates personalised audio-visual experiences within the artwork
