ILERo has been set up and finished for the first iteration of development. Several people have visited ILERo and checked out its acoustic and visual opportunities. The room was even moved from its regular place to the foyer of Ansbach University for a presentation of a group of governmental politicians and international guests to show research work going on at Ansbach University. Below are some pictures presenting the room, visitors and guests.

Guest students of Ansbach International Summer School experiencing recordings of Bird Island/ Altmühlsee in May 2018.

An academic delegation of Tongji University, Shanghai, China, visiting ILERo and experiencing recordings of Arizona desert. ILERo was at that time set up in the foyer of the main building of Ansbach University in June 2018.

We are very happy about the many positive feedbacks we got – not only from academic partners but also from employees of the University’s administration who strongly recommended to have an ILERo for short times of relaxation close by in order to feel more fresh and powerful for daily work.

ILERo is now ready to start with empirical work. First rough experiments have been done in August. We are on our way to plan and do more detailed studies.

Davide Straninger and Andreas Uhl using a laser distance measuring tool to calulate the distance and angles of the 12 speaker locations of the sound system.

Image by Cornelius Poepel

Without words …

Setting up ILERo (assembling and image by Andreas Uhl)

Having established the cooperation with Departamento de Sonido at Facultad de Artes of Universidad de Chile we were working hard in organizing material for setting up ILERo. What is ILERo? The acronym ILERo is a short form for Immersive Listening Experience Room.

Draft Immersive Listening Experience Room (Image: Andreas Uhl)

The room offers a 12.2 channel sound system and six projection surfaces for the visuals. One of the objectives is to undertake research in how far virtual reality scenarios of the Listen(n) project differ in the perception in comparison to the perception via EcoRift.

Andreas Uhl, student of the Ansbach MIK Master program has made a big effort in planning the room. He is now working on setting it up. We are very happy that the director Dr. Hans Mehringer of the Ansbach company Die Muggergittermacher has offered a room at the company’s industrial site to set up and test the system.

Room for setting up ILERo (Image: Andreas Uhl)

This room will be filled with the ILERo AV materials. We will keep you posted. Stay tuned.

Director of ILERo: Prof. Dr. Cornelius Poepel
Scientific assistance: Robert Kraemer
Developer / Setting up: Andreas Uhl
Student assistance: Davide Straninger

ILERo is a project of KoSI

After having brought the Listen(n) Project to the bird island of the „Altmühlsee“ in Germany, we are now facing the next step of collaboration: Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Artes, Department of Sound Engineering.

Within the department of Arts, the „Universidad de Chile“ in Santiago has its own „Sound Department“ where students who are fascinated by the universe of sound have the possibility to learn about all its facets.

One of the professors is Carla Badani Schoneweg. Professor Badani is mainly teaching acoustics and pychoacoustics since 1994 but also did a lot of research and development on architectural acoustics and investigating the communication of emotions via sound in the human speech. This spring (2017) she came to visit the University of Applied Sciene in Ansbach (Ansbach UAS) in Germany together with one of her students. This was the moment when the cooperation between the founders of the Listen(n) Project and Prof. Cornelius Poepel (Ansbach UAS) was joined by Prof. Badani Schoneweg. Now, half a year later, Cornelius Poepel and Luisa Filip, a master student of „Multimedia and Information“, are visiting the Universidad de Chile in Santiago to finally start the collaboration for the Listen(n) Project. This visit is funded by the Bavarian Research Alliance (BayFOR).

In addition to doing a workshop with the Chilean students on the Listen(n) Project, they are going out on several fieldtrips with the aim of finding some first possible spots for nature recordings around the city of Santiago.

Places could be for example found in the Yerba Loca National Park, in the Park El Arrayan or a bit farer away in the natural area of Cajon del Maipo. As Chile with its very huge north-south dimension, so to say a unique shape and variety of different landscapes, we believe that there is a huge potential in adding valuable content for the Listen(n) Project.

Prof. Badani Schoneweg and Luisa Filip doing field recordings

As the interest of the students and their Professor, Carla Badani Schoneweg, in the Listen(n) Project has been strenghtend in a talk and a workshop, we expect to welcome the first sounds of Chile soon in the Listen(n)-Database.

Prof. Cornelius Poepel’s talk on the Listen(n) Project and Audio Signal-Driven Sound Synthesis