SoundXY4: Supporting Tabletop Collaboration and Awareness with Ambisonics Spatialisation

Co-located tabletop tangible user interfaces (TUIs) for mu-sic performance are known for promoting multi-player col-laboration with a shared interface, yet it is still unclear how to best support the awareness of the workspace in terms of understanding individual actions and the other group mem-bers actions, in parallel. In this paper, we investigate the effects of providing auditory feedback using ambisonics spa-tialisation, aimed at informing users about the location of the tangibles on the tabletop surface, with groups of mixed musical backgrounds. Participants were asked to impro-vise music on “SoundXY4: The Art of Noise”, a tabletop system that includes sound samples inspired by Russolo’s taxonomy of noises. We compared spatialisation vs. no-spatialisation conditions, and findings suggest that, when using spatialisation, there was a clearer workspace aware-ness, and a greater engagement in the musical activity as an immersive experience. Keywords ambisonics, spatialisation, auditory feedback, interactive tabletops, tangible user interfaces, The Art of Noise, musi-cal improvisation 1