Gesture and field: ontological approaches to interactive sound in virtual reality

This article examines how virtual reality musical instruments can articulate contrasting yet converging ontological models of interactive sound. Through a comparative analysis of SIIIGNAL, a gesture-centered, physics-based performance system, and the 3-D Granulator, a field-centered, EEG-based adaptive installation, the study investigates how sound can function as a temporally unfolding event shaped by embodied action and perceptual attunement. Drawing on aesthetic and philosophical positions from German Idealism to Heidegger, the article argues that gesture-driven causality and field-based disclosure represent complementary modes of musical emergence within immersive environments. In SIIIGNAL, sound arises through directed action, extending human intention into a manipulable sonic medium. In the 3-D Granulator, sound originates from the reciprocal relations among locomotion, neural variability, and spatial orientation, reframing musical interaction as a process of disclosure that displaces control. Together, these systems demonstrate how VR-based musical practice can reconfigure the subject-object relation that underpins modern aesthetics, employing technology as a medium through which presence becomes structurally audible. The resulting framework situates VR sound design within a poietic paradigm in which gesture and field, action and attunement, converge to reveal new modes of musical meaning.