Athanasius Kircher’s sonic playground - an acoustic virtual reality installation

Athanasius Kircher’s Sonic Playground is an interactive virtual reality (VR) installation that explores architectural acoustics through spatial sound simulation and real-time user engagement. Developed in Unreal Engine 5.4.4 using the Meta XR plugin, the project employs acoustic ray tracing for realistic auralisation and six degrees of freedom (6DoF) binaural audio rendering, enabling users to interact with acoustically responsive virtual spaces. Inspired by seventeenth-century polymath Athanasius Kircher, one of the first scholars to formalise the analogies between sound and light propagation, the project reimagines his acoustic theories and studies within a virtual environment. It features a series of four architecturally resonant spaces: a reconstructed model of the Ear of Dionysius, an elliptical domed chamber, a labyrinth, and a minimalist cathedral-like structure. These environments are designed to recreate acoustic phenomena characteristic of historic architecture such as whispering gallery effects, echo layering, and reverberant decay. Users engage with the environments through controller-triggered impulses, theoretical instruments, and live voice input captured via the headset’s microphone, receiving real-time auditory feedback shaped by the scene’s geometry and materials. By combining early modern acoustic theory with contemporary VR design, Athanasius Kircher’s Sonic Playground provides a playful yet acoustically rigorous framework for investigating architectural acoustics and the relationship between spatial form and auditory perception. The project contributes to current work in immersive cultural heritage, virtual acoustics, and design-led research, proposing a model of interactive auralisation that merges scientific inquiry with speculative reconstruction.