Engaging bodies within immersive audio worlds.
Research - Art - Wellbeing
Welcome to Adventures in Metaplasticity.
This website features Worldbuilders Immersive Audio Stories for Parkinson’s project which is the initial project exploring the mind/body/environment focus central to Adventures in Metaplasticity. Worldbuilders started as an artistic hunch, a ‘what if’ project, that 5 years later became reality through a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast.
The practice-based PhD research in turn has influenced my artistic practice and I am currently developing several artistic projects with metaplasticity at their heart. Projects that offer the participant/audience an embodied artistic experience that sets out to create a strong connection between a virtual or imaginary environment and the participants physical body. I hope to share these projects and ideas here as they evolve.
Hanna Slattne, May 2022
AIM for Parkinson’s explained.
Animation by Stéphanie Heckman
Metaplasticity
Engaging our bodies within a virtual or imagined environment whilst focussing on sensory and motor imagery, changes our brains.
This is metaplasticity: an extended idea of neuroplasticity that adds a dynamic brain/body/environment to idea of cognition.
Adventures in Metaplasticity develop projects for specific audiences exploring strategies of being in the world physically and by doing so affecting their metaplasticity.
By changing how we make sense of the world we engage with it differently which in turn affects our brain and body.
AIM for Parkinson’s disease
Worldbuilders: Immersive audio stories for people with Parkinson’s
Physical exercise is the most important aspect of the self management of Parkinson’s symptoms. This project complements physical exercise, by stimulating the motor system, the imagination and wellbeing during times when it might not be possible to keep up actual exercise. The audios can be used whilst moving, but are designed for the participant sitting safely and comfortably with feet on the floor.
Participants requires a set of headphones, a computer or a smartphone.
The narrator, supports the participant in thinking consciously about walking and to create motor imagery in first person perspective. The prompts encourages the participant to engage in and with the virtual environment using all the senses. The immersive audio soundscapes incorporate rhythmical audio cues and music to support walking.
To support neuroplasticity, we need to repeat an activity over and over again.
Through stories we can create a range of different experiences to suits peoples tastes and interests and even make bespoke content.
This is just the beginning; A PhD project developed to support people with Parkinson’s to develop tools and skills to manage movement and mobility issues that has evolved into Adventures in Metaplasticty, with the potential to create a range of different immersive audio experienced for Parkinson’s and for other conditions afflicting mobility.
For more information about the research please go to the PhD Research Page.
AIM for Parkinson’s Content
4 Practice Audios - Short preparatory practice audios focussing on one specific skill at the time.
3 Audio Stories - Different approaches to exploring co-creation through immersive stories.
7 Walk With Me Audios - Developed for the Walk With Me App and designed to be listened to whilst out on a walk.
Practice Audios
The practice audios are created prepare the audience for the audio stories. They separate out different elements of what the project asks of its participants; to create an environment, to practice conscious walking, to develop motor imagery skills and to practice the above to a given rhythm.
INSTRUCTIONS: To use the practice audios make sure you sit comfortably and upright in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. For the best effect of the immersive audio please use a set of over ear head phones.
Please use headphones for best experience.
Sensory Mental Imagery Practice
Sensory focus - an audio focussing on imagining a lemon focussing on all the senses: taste, smell, touch, sight and sound.
Photo: Hanne Hoogendam through Unsplash
Rhythm and walking Mental Imagery Practice
Rhythms and motor imagery - an audio to practice the connection between a heard rhythm and motor imagery.
Audio environments - Practice
Environments - An audio providing three different immersive sound environments in which to practice motor imagery walking.
Photo: Marius Niveri through Unsplash
Conscious Walking - Practice audio
Conscious movement - an audio exploring the connection between developing Motor Imagery skills and conscious movement.
Photo: Arek Adeoye through Unsplash
Please use headphones for best experience.
Audio Stories
For the Worldbuilders PhD project I have developed three audio stories using different ways of merging story and motor imagery as well as different narrative and structural approaches. The audio stories feature audio cues consisting of interlaced footsteps, rhythms and music.
Forest Walk focus on the experience of walking through a forest. 15 minutes long.
The Cave alternates between story and walking sequences to allow for rest and refocus. 35 minutes long
The Phone Call experiments with a way to co-create a story around an expected phone call. 25 minutes long.
Please use headphones to best enjoy the spatialised immersive sound design.
Forest Walk - Worldbuilders project
A sensory walk through the forest.
The Cave - Worldbuilders project
Lets go for a walk you and I and I will tell you a story.
The Phone Call - Worldbuilders project
You are expecting a phone call that will change your life.
Walk With Me - App
Walk With Me is an app which is linked to the GPS (global positioning system) function on a smartphone. The app can be used whilst walking. It will trigger a new audio at a set distance between each audio. The 7 different audio prompts are simple creative reflections to stimulate the imagination and motor imagery by focussing on what you see around you on your walk and how you feel in your body.
The app was developed with the support of Future Screens NI together with Robin Price
Prototype app developed by Robin Price on the MobMuPlat platform
Walk with Me Audios
Seasons - engaging with the environment around you imagining walking through it in different seasons.
Being Poetic - responding to the place of your walk with words, metaphors and poetic description.
Interoception - considering what your body is telling you, whilst you are walking.
A bit of sci-fi - playing with our sense of gravity as we walk by imagining a very different environment.
Dopamine - Imagining the dopamine flowing from your brain to your body keeping you moving.
Time Travel - engaging with the place of your walk and imagining times past.
The Mountain Top - imagining the sensations in your body of having walked up a mountain and the vista stretching out in front of you.
The Walk With Me audios are simple mono recordings to blend in with sounds of the environment as heard through headphones when used on a walk.