Sound design and interaction in audiovisual installations

This thesis presents the creative process of the interactive audiovisual installations Abstrações, Cerejeira and Caminho das águas, relating them to the main objective of the research, which consists in the analysis of the models that integrate the conceptual project of each installation, its sound design and the interactive processes that model the relation between visitors and the work. This objective was achieved through a practical approach to the research process and was implemented by the designing of new installations and the respective evaluation about the behavior of visitors. This process was repeated at each step of the research. This work includes the analysis and origin of our references to the concepts of installations, sound design and interactivity. We present a proposal to structure sound design based on the spectro-morphology developed by Denis Smalley. We propose the use of this theoretical corpus as a model to structure the relation between the sound and the referential content of the work, and between the sound and the interactive model that is intended to be open for visitors' participation. We have implemented a set of descriptors to retrieve physical properties of the movement. We also developed a set of descriptors based on data fusion from these physical properties, intending to describe the classes of Effort for the Laban Movement Analysis. These descriptors aim to fulfill shortcomings observed in the interactive model adopted in the early part of the research, specifically during the development of the installations Abstrações e Cerejeira. The installation Caminho das águas integrates the developments achieved by this research: a new approach to the relation among the conceptual project of a work, its sound design and the interactive model adopted. An extensive study with participants applied over this installation enabled us to evaluate the results achieved from the hypotheses raised during the development of the research (AU)