move studio

MOVE Studio (2018) - Given the design brief by Microsoft to create a “Mixed Reality” experience that was accessible to everyone (i.e., not another VR-shooter…), the result was an experience centered around an environment comprised of hand painted skyboxes and motion-captured dances that reacted to, and encouraged your, movement. My role, similar to Heroes, was again to own all sound, but on this piece I was given much more creative freedom. My focus was on how to encourage movement through the use of sound, consuming the positional data of the Microsoft Mixed Reality device. To encourage general movement, I created a programmatic soundtrack that dropped evolving spatial sound nodes each time a user’s movement velocity passed a velocity threshold. Other interactions included linking averaged velocity to a low-pass filter, and the relative Y-position to a reverb.

Come into a space where unfettered movement takes you in unexpected directions. Yes, this is unlike anything you've seen or experienced before. You are transported—scene by scene—to a place of pure energy, grace, and athleticism. Where the fluid poetry of dance and art meets the explosive power of competitive sport. Where basic movements push the bounds of gravity, where your own power and grace will astound you. The experience is as mesmerizing as it is surprising, destined to fill you with a sense of joy and wonder. An experience so amazing you will want a record of it. Of course, that's possible too.

MOVE Studio is an experience created and commissioned by Microsoft for the debut of their Mixed Reality headsets in 2017. The piece lives as a permanent sculpture inside the Cliff House (mixed reality's equivalent of a computer's desktop) that all users are able to interact with immediately after putting their headsets on for the first time. In addition, it is one of four experience Microsoft used in their brick and mortar stores upon the lunch of their MR headest.