This paper presents Augmented Ubiquity, a 90 s audiovisual music composition designed for six degrees of freedom (6DoF) Virtual Reality. It was created by an interdisciplinary team of a composer, a dancer, sound engineers, and visual engineers. It combines 4D Gaussian Splatting (4D GS) and dynamic binauralization as tools for artistic expression. A dance performance was captured using 112 DSLR cameras and rendered as 4D GS. The original music composition was spatialized with an object-based method. Users explore the audiovisual scene with a head-mounted display and binaural audio via headphones. Tracked user position is sent to the audio scene via Open Sound Control. The work was successfully presented to a public audience. Seven audience members were interviewed in a semi-structured format. Reflexive Thematic Analysis identified five themes including novelty of experience, dream-like immersion, and intimacy with the performer. The results suggest that 6DoF spatial music composition in VR constitutes a distinct artistic medium. As such, it requires dedicated compositional strategies. The combination of 4D GS with spatial audio is a viable and artistically productive approach.

Author(s): Etezazi, Sascha Armin; Jäger, Benedikt Samuel; Kilger, Lou; Dawson, Pablo; Steitz, Manuel

AES Convention: 160; Paper Number: 411

Publication Date: 2026-05-28

Session subject: Cross-Disciplinary Sound Studies, Immersive Audio