Sarita Chen – Looking Outwards – 4

Max Cooper is a musician of the techno and electronic genre. One of his projects includes an immersive 4D musical experience. It’s kind of like virtual reality, except the focus is more on sound than visuals.

“The 4D system, and a lot of the work I do with my music in terms of spatiality and trying to create immersive spaces and structures within them, has to do with psycho-acoustics and the power of sound to create our perception of the reality we’re in,” he said. “The idea is to create an alternative reality that can be very beautiful, relaxing, jarring, and even uncomfortable, but still an interesting experience that can communicate a new idea.” – Cooper, about the project.

For the 4D effect, Cooper used a software that enabled him to design and build a 3-dimensional representation of the music. The sounds can take on any shape or form inside this 3-dimensional space. The software also calculates the effect of the speakers to create variance in the sounds.

What I admire about the project is the level of innovation it has to create an entirely original musical experience. It seems that he spent a lot of time and effort thinking about the shape of the sounds. The sound system used is known as 4D Sound, and was created by a group stationed in Amsterdam.