Scenography of immersive virtual musical instruments

Abstract

Immersive Virtual Musical Instruments (IVMIs) can be considered as the meeting between Music Technology and Virtual Reality. Being both musical instruments and elements of Virtual Environments, IVMIs require a transversal approach from their designers, in particular when the final aim is to play them in front of an audience, as part of a scenography. In this paper, we combine the main constraints of musical performances and Virtual Reality applications into a set of dimensions, meant to extensively describe IVMIs stage setups. A number of existing stage setups are then classified using these dimensions, explaining how they were used to showcase live virtual performances and discussing their scenographic level.