Sound Bytes - Game Engines x Music

If you missed out on their SXSW Sydney 2024 session in October this year, this is your chance to relive this experience. The best of all is that this session is open to public and free-to-attend!

Dive into the dynamic fusion of video gaming and musical innovation with this panel showcasing the revolutionary use of game engines in creating captivating musical experiences.

Join three songwriters and researchers on a panel discussion moderated by Nick Atkins in exploring game engines as a tool in expressing their music - Sally Coleman, crafting real-time musical performances for their virtual band ‘Big Sand’, Jacob Hedges, creating interactive music in VR that swallows you whole, and Yunyu Ong, making a post-apocalyptic drinking song (Empires) behave like space-time adaptive buildings.

About Sally Coleman:

Sally Coleman, Creative Director, Big Sand

Sally Coleman is a musician, radio personality and the creative director of a new science fiction virtual band called Big Sand.

Big Sand is an animated band that sees Sally using motion capture and Unreal Engine to bring the characters to life. Set on a beautiful but harsh desert planet, the project is a playful expedition into the world of emerging technology and different ways of envisioning the future music industry.

Sally is undertaking a PhD in motion capture for live music performance at UTS, where she is continuing the research and development of Big Sand’s world-first live show. Big Sand’s live performance (see it at SXSW Sydney!) involves Sally appearing as a real-time avatar to interact with an audience.

Sally is also a passionate community-builder, working to connect and collaborate with artists and creative technologists around Australia and the world.

About Yunyu Ong:

Yunyu is a multilingual Composer, Lyricist, Sound Designer, Singer-songwriter, Storyteller, Programmer and Spatial Audio PhD Researcher with Dolby/UTS. With a strong background in world music and contemporary pop, Yunyu has played a variety of instruments ranging from vocals and keyboards to Taiko, Guzheng, Guqin, and Hulusi. Her works have premiered in film festivals worldwide. Previous awards include winning Triple J Unearthed,  the Crystal Pine award for “Best Composer for Short” in the prestigious International Sound and Film Music Festival (Croatia).

Yunyu's innovative compositions have been featured at Ars Electronica for two consecutive years and at Siggraph Asia (Real Time Live with Taikoz and Roland Japan), where she created a solo Taiko piece that generates responsive orchestral layers in real-time. She is a finalist in the prestigious Art Music Awards for Work of the Year in Electroacoustic and Sound Art and is a Roland-endorsed artist. This year, Yunyu continues her European tour at NIME (Netherlands - New Instrument Musical Expression) and Ars Electronica (Austria), presenting two of her works as installations and interactive music performances. She is also the recipient of the competitive Creative Music Arts Projects for Individuals and Groups grant, enabling her to further develop the next installation of her real-time orchestral layered performances with Taikoz.

As a PhD researcher in binaural spatial audio, Yunyu's practice-based research focuses on "Quest Driven Spatial Songs," which are headphone-driven experiences that adapt to the listener’s position in space-time, revealing different arrangements and multi-language, multi-perspective lyrics. Her research is supported by scholarships from Dolby and the University of Technology Sydney.

About Jacob Hedges:

Jacob Hedges is a sound designer, audio engineer, and composer for both linear and non-linear media. His audio projects range from film and documentary post-production, music recording, immersive audiobooks, and interactive installations. Jacob is also studying a PhD at UTS as part of a project funded by Dolby Australia.

This research focuses on immersive sound design for real-time virtual environments, and how specific creative approaches can be utilized to enhance the user experience within interactive audio settings. His project integrates a practice-based component, taking the form of an interactive VR music experience that allows users to playfully manipulate the audio elements in a virtual storytelling environment. The project aims to explore new ways of engaging with music and art through the use of spatial audio and game engines, and to help pave the way for audio creatives to explore the potential of new media as a unique space for immersive storytelling through sound.

About Nick Atkins:

Nick Atkins is a theatre director and writer. Recently he’s been focused on new writing, mobile media and has been shortlisted for the Patrick White and Rodney Seaborn Awards. His work has been presented by companies including Sydney Festival, Riverside Theatres, PP&VA, Casula Powerhouse, the International Conference on Movement and Computing as well as the International Symposium for Electronic Arts. He leads the creative studio Operated Coin based on Darug Country in Parramatta, is currently a PhD candidate with the Creativity and Cognition Studios (UTS) a casual lecturer (UNSW) and on the board of directors at Shopfront Youth Arts Co-op.

Nick has held senior artistic and advocacy roles across the arts sector including as; director, new work for PP&VA, chair of Theatre Network NSW, member of Create NSW’s Artform Advisory Board (Theatre), co-artistic director of Crack Theatre Festival (TiNA) and board member of PACT. He has completed cultural fellowships for the City of Parramatta, Create NSW and has been an artist in residence with Bundanon, UNSW, Centre D’Art Marnay Sur-Seine (France) and NES Artist Residency (Iceland). 

This event is held as part of FASStival 2024.