Shared Wavelength

Daniel Brown is a creative technologist specialising in projection mapping, virtual reality, interactive installations and immersive media. 

In September 2026, Daniel became a creative in residence with XR Stories to advance the research and development phase of his project, “Shared Wavelength”.

Shared Wavelength is an asymmetric virtual reality (VR) and co-located music-building experience for one headset player and an in-room audience. The VR player enters a stylised 3D musical environment, such as a nightclub or recording studio. Initially sparse, the space gradually reveals traces of a fictional track, event or recording session that the group must reconstruct.

Five musical elements – such as drums, bassline, synth and vocal fragment – have become separated and distributed throughout the virtual environment. The player must locate them using visual and spatial-audio clues, collect the fragments by completing mini-games, and place them into a geometric sequencer. When the fragment is placed correctly, its corresponding musical stem joins the shared track in synchronisation with the stems already playing. 

The music becomes progressively fuller and the virtual environment transforms with it. Lighting, movement, architecture, fictional posters, studio equipment and other traces of the imagined musical world gradually become active. Recovering all five fragments completes the track and triggers a final audiovisual transformation.

The in-room audience watches a purpose-built interface on an LED screen. Rather than seeing a simple mirror of the headset, the audience receives information unavailable to the VR player. This may include rhythm patterns, incomplete lyrics, spatial relationships between objects, historical or fictional clues, information about the location of the next challenge, or feedback about the player’s progress.

The audience must communicate this information to the VR player. The difference between the two perspectives is designed to create collaboration, interpretation and occasional miscommunication, with the solution emerging through communication between the headset player and the people in the room.

Daniel will utilise the XR Stories immersive R&D lab in The Guildhall, York and in-house technical expertise in spatial audio to develop and test the Shared Wavelength experience. The prototype will use original music and fictional visual and archival material, exploring different musical environments and styles while drawing particular inspiration from the architecture, objects, technologies and communal cultures surrounding music-making and nightlife.

Daniel Brown

Categories: Audio, Performance, Research, Technology