Walk this way: musically guided walking experiences

Musical soundtracks will be important features of future locative experiences from tours to games. We present a study designed to uncover potential relationships between higher-level musical structures such as harmony, melody, timbre, dynamic intensity and punctuation and users' spatial experiences. We observed twenty-two participants exploring an open field while listening to four contrasting musical compositions, and then interviewed them afterwards. We report their different approaches to interpreting the music, strategies for mapping zones, choice of stopping destinations, and their awareness and appreciation of the music. Our discussion of these findings in relation to the literature leads us to propose six initial principles to guide the composition of mobile and locative soundtracks, and also to articulate a three-layer framework of global, regional and local attachment to help guide the attachment of musical features to different regions within a locative experience.

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