This case study examines the Witness Blanket VR Experience to explore how Indigenous‑led immersive audio production can support the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in virtual environments. Grounded in Indigenous epistemologies of listening, the study draws on participatory sound collection, documentation of the audio production workflow, and subjective evaluation through community‑engaged events. Results demonstrate how spatial audio and culturally grounded production protocols can enable relational storytelling, ethical engagement, and protocol‑informed VR design.
This paper presents an exploratory mixed reality prototype investigating how low-cost spatial audio and XR technologies may already enable partially believable augmented reality experiences. Rather than pursuing maximal realism across all modalities, the project relied on selective auditory realism, intentionally degraded sounds and visuals, and progressive perceptual trust building in order to create plausible auditory events within a mixed reality environment. Participants were introduced to a fictional experimental protocol progressively constructing increasingly dense auditory reconstruction around them. At the end of the experience, all virtual reconstructions abruptly disappeared, leaving participants alone in the now silent physical room, revealing the extent to which virtual events had progressively contaminated their perception of reality. Qualitative observations suggest that coherent multimodal staging and expectation shaping play an important role in perceptual acceptance alongside rendering realism itself. Beyond the presented prototype, the project highlights how current XR and spatial audio tools already enable new forms of immersive narrative experiences based on persistent ambiguity between reality and virtual reconstruction.
We present Music of the Spheres (MOTS), an immersive virtual reality (VR) sequencer that integrates natural interaction with hybrid spatial audio reproduction for music composition and performance. MOTS enables users to create and manipulate sound objects arranged in a 3D step sequencer surrounding the user. Using hand gestures, users can instantiate, position, and remove sounds, simultaneously composing both temporal and spatial musical structures. The system combines binaural reproduction for private preview in the headset and Ambisonic loudspeaker reproduction for shared listening in audience-oriented experiences. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of MOTS and highlight design considerations for intuitive musical interfaces that are uniquely crafted for VR. We also present the results of a survey of 27 participants at a public exhibition, which indicate positive responses in terms of immersion and usability, as well as a coherent spatial audio experience across the hybrid reproduction system. Finally, we outline future directions, including expanded controls, collaborative functionality, and improved spatial audio rendering.
