Workshop | Thomas Meckel et al.: SONA – Audio-VR

Virtual Reality technologies remain largely inaccessible to blind and visually impaired People due to their strong reliance on visual interfaces. At the same time, blind people possess highly developed skills in spatial orientation and navigation through sound. SONA takes this contradiction as its starting point and investigates how VR can be reconceptualized as an inclusive medium by utilising spatial audio as a primary navigation and interaction tool.
Since 2023, SONA has developed Audio-VR works in close collaboration with blind and visually impaired communities in Cologne and North Rhine-Westphalia. This work has produced two formats: SONA – Seeing Sound, a large-scale performative VR installation in complete darkness, where visitors navigate a motion-captured space using spatial audio, sensory shoes, and voice commands, guided by a blind performer; and SONA – Diving in the Dark, a mobile Audio-VR game in which players explore a virtual underwater world — guided entirely by 3D sound — using a smartphone and Headphones with head-tracking as a display-free VR headset.
From a technical perspective, the workshop addresses spatial audio not as an immersive effect but as a functional interface for navigation and interaction. We will discuss the Audio-VR navigation tools developed within the project — including virtual echolocation, a virtual audio cane, and virtual wall membranes — and the design decisions behind them. The technical stack (Unity, Wwise/Audiokinetic, head-tracking via smartphone sensors, voice recognition and microphone input) will be presented alongside the iterative research process and our inclusive worldbuilding methods.
The workshop combines a presentation and discussion of the artistic and technical background with a hands-on opportunity to test SONA – Diving in the Dark.

More about SONA here.
SONA Film here.

Requirements

None

About the workshop facilitators

Thomas Meckel. Media artist, game designer, and musician. His interactive cinema performance Solaris has been presented internationally. Together with Tobias Thomas, he curates the concert series Round at the Cologne Philharmonic. He studied Media Arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Cultural Studies in Lüneburg, and Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen. Since 2023, he has been developing concepts for SONA and moderating its artistic realization.

Dennis Scheiba. Music informatician and Software developer from Cologne. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Sound and Reality (Robert Schumann University of Music, Düsseldorf). A core developer of the music software SuperCollider, he has been a research and artistic assistant at the Robert
Schumann University of Music Düsseldorf since 2023, working in the field of artificial intelligence and Musical practice. At SONA, he contributes expertise in AI, sound, and interface development—particularly for the AI seagull character and custom text-to-speech systems.

Moritz Wesp. Game designer, trombonist, and media artist. As a trombonist, he performs internationally with ensembles such as Matthias Muches’ Bonecrusher and Mariá Portugal’s Erosão. He develops his own electronic instruments (including a virtual trombone) and programs interactive music games. Moritz studied at the Lucerne School of Music and at the Cologne University of Music and Dance.