The Internet Chair

Abstract

A pivot (swivel, rotating) chair is considered as an input/output device, an information appliance. The input modality is orientation tracking, which can dynamically select transfer functions used to spatialize audio in a rotation-invariant soundscape. In groupware situations, like teleconferencing or chat spaces, such orientation tracking can also be used to twist iconic representations of a seated user, avatars in a virtual world, enabling social situation awareness via coupled visual displays, soundscape-stabilized virtual source locations, and direction-dependent projection of non-omnidirectional sources. Using its audio output modality, the system can present unencumbered binaural sound with soundscape stabilization for multichannel sound image localization.