How can Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) serve as a storytelling medium? Sound designer Matias Harju shares insights from The Reign Union, an experimental interactive AAR story currently exhibited at WHS Union Theatre in Helsinki, Finland.
This workshop addresses the challenges and breakthroughs of creating an immersive, headphone-based 6DoF AAR experience. In The Reign Union, two simultaneous participants experience the same bio-fictional story from different points of audition. Narrative design considerations and approaches are discussed and demonstrated through video clips featuring binaural sound recorded from the experience. References to other AAR experiences around the world are included to provide a broader context. A central theme is how reality anchors the narrative, while virtual sounds reveal new perspectives and interpretations.
The session also briefly examines the development of an in-house 6DoF AAR prototype platform, used for The Reign Union story as well as other narrative research conducted by the author and his team. This has been a journey through various pose tracking, virtual acoustic, and authoring solutions, resulting in a scalable system potentially suited for complex indoor spaces.
Matias, author of the forthcoming book Audio Augmented Reality: Concepts, Technologies, and Narratives (Routledge, June 2025), invites attendees to discuss and discover the possibilities of AAR as a tool for storytelling and artistic expression.
