Proprius: Sonification of animal behavior in an autonomous interactive musical ecosystem

Proprius is an interactive augmented reality composition based on the sonification of organisms in an artificial ecosystem. It is an autonomous sonic environment, where the sonification of an ecological simulation is used as a means to create an interactive augmented reality music composition. The consecutive layers of a food chain are used as movements that dictate the temporal progression of the composition. The listener explores a physical space augmented with Proprius to experience the compositional unfolding of the ecosystem. The listener's presence in the system affects nearby organisms; the listener is thereby situated as an interactive agent that influences the progression of the work. The stochastic allocation of resources at the beginning of the work ensures that each instance of Proprius is a unique composition. This dissertation presents the final report of Proprius, a creative research project that was conducted between 2015 and 2018. It describes the development of a biologically interactive sonic ecosystem in Processing, spatialization and interaction methods and techniques used for composition as well as a musical outcome of the interaction. In this research, an artificial ecosystem designed using the Processing platform simulates animal behaviors. The simulation data are then fed into a sonification engine designed with Max/MSP, which creates an immersive audio scene in real-time. The listener's position in the scene is tracked with a Kinect sensor; as the listener explores the exhibition space, a binaural audio scene augments their physical environment. The overall structure of this dissertation is composed of five thematic chapters. The first chapter presents the structure and contents of the dissertation. It also explains motivations, aims and objectives as well as research methods employed by the research. Chapter two begins by laying out the background information in biology within the scope of this research and focuses on the key themes of this study. It then presents an overview of the existing studies on the use of ecological models in music composition and sound art. Chapter three further explains the theoretical details of the development of the case study focusing on the programming of organisms. It describes behavioral ecology and ethological models used in Proprius. It also clarifies how the methods are applied in the study and how certain tools and techniques are utilized in the implementation of the system. Chapter four presents the compositional development and outcome of the research. It delves into approaches to sonifying animal behaviors, evaluates the musical characteristics of these behaviors, and structures the resulting sonifications in the context of an augmented reality composition. The final chapter gives a brief summary and critique. It includes limitations, concluding remarks, suggestions for further research, and propositions. The first appendix section includes the Processing code of Proprius. The second appendix section includes the complete list of audio examples given throughout this dissertation. You can listen to the individual sound examples given in the related section. The PDF version of the dissertation provides hyperlinks to references, figures, tables and chapters, and to audio examples. Additionally, the document also provides hyperlinks to audio examples. The whole appendix section also can be found in the accompanying CD that is provided with the dissertation. I would like to present this study as a modest artistic proposition in the field of sonic arts for future researchers. I believe that this study offers a strong contribution as a case study that blends music composition with ecological simulation, embodied interaction, and augmented reality audio. I expect that with recent advances in immersive media technologies, augmented reality compositions such as Proprius will gain further prominence.