Spatialized Storytelling: Aesthetics of spatial audio and narrative creative approaches

From technology to content, the field of immersive and interactive media is growing and changing at an incredible rate. However, even in this period of rapid development, creators are still managing to make content which has staying power—games, music, videos, and other media that wow us today, and will hopefully continue to wow us in a new immersive media future. As any creator will attest, this staying factor is in large part supported by the quality of the work’s apparent motivation—how good is the story?

In this panel workshop, we want to focus on the aesthetics of productions in spatial audio and spatial multi-media from this content-quality perspective. What are the aspects of immersive and interactive formats that help (or hinder) narrative structure? What are the roles of listeners and viewers within the design of the spatial production? How do we navigate the role of the listener’s agency in interactive audio and media? And what is the language that we can, or should, be using to consider immersive experience in immersive media?