Feel it in my bones: Composing multimodal experience through tissue conduction

Abstract

We outline here the feasibility of coherently utilising tissue conduction for spatial audio and tactile input. Tissue conduction display-specific compositional concerns are discussed; it is hypothesised that the qualia available through this medium substantively differ from those for conventional artificial means of appealing to auditory spatial perception. The implications include that spatial music experienced in this manner constitutes a new kind of experience, and that the ground rules of composition are yet to be established. We refer to results from listening experiences with one hundred listeners in an unstructured attribute elicitation exercise, where prominent themes such as “strange”, “weird”, “positive”, “spatial” and “vibrations” emerged. We speculate on future directions aimed at taking maximal advantage of the principle of multimodal perception to broaden the informational bandwidth of the display system. Some implications for composition for hearing-impaired are elucidated.