Dragon's Den success for Southampton composer
Postgraduate composition student Ben Mawson has won first prize in a competition at the Digital Economy conference SXSC3 for his innovative work on 3DBARE.
The 3DBARE platform is an integral component of Ben's Music You Can Walk Inside, allowing listeners to investigate digital output as though it were physically present by means of listener position and orientation tracking as controller of a binaural audio rendering engine.
The SXSC3 competition was for a cash prize in support of further development of a digital project, and entries were evaluated through proposals followed by Dragon's Den-style pitches by their authors.
Ben's prize of £7k will allow him to take the 3DBARE platform to proof of concept ready for further development. The next three months' work will involve tightening operation and presentation of 3DBARE to show potential funders in readiness for transfer to smartphone platforms.
Ben has been working in the meantime with GPS-enabled software for Android called noTours that allows composers to annotate the landscape with audio. It is a means of responding to and interpreting anthropological space, subverting the desocialising effect of ubiquitous digital audio (through devices which simply play back audio).
noTours is a unique way of reconsidering the sounds of a place and how we engage through listening to a location. It is also a fantastically versatile means of presenting immersive audio, permitting the listener to construct the heard entirety in different ways on each audition dependent on their route through the landscape.
Ben's other current work is as composer in residence with New Dimensions, funded by Hampshire County Council. He is developing a large scale geo-located audio portrait of the town of Gosport, celebrating its unique naval and maritime heritage.
http://www.newdimensions.org.uk/current-projects/music-you-can-walk-inside