VR musical Instrument

Noise Drawers is a VR game in which you play a totally new form of instrument. Surrounded by walls of drawers, each of which has a different, unique sound, you reach and interact with them, opening and closing them in various expressive ways to create music.

The player stand in a four walled room, covered in drawers. There are three main kinds of drawer:
  • Tape drawers, when you open it, it plays an audio clip as it winds itself shut again.
  • Expressive drawers, where according to how fast or slow you open the drawer, the audio clip will be more or less intense.
  • Loop drawers, where the length of an open drawer signifies the volume of the audio loop coming from it.

Performance

Queerness
This VR piece is also designed with stage performance in mind. The player uses their whole body, and almost like a conductor, brings audio forward in expressive ways.

In a performance using Noise Drawers, the musician will end up dancing as they gently open drawers, drawing out a soft, elongated sound, or rapidly slam a draw shut, evoking a loud percussive beat. They embody the intended emotion, feeling it personally, as they display it through their movement.

​I will be consulting with choreographers on how to maximise the performance side of this work.
I’ve been driven to create Noise Drawers, this fantastical instrument, to explore musicianship in videogames.

Queer Noise describes the first piece I compose for it, to express my own feelings about queerness and gender, and how it affects both my advocacy work and industry work.

For example an Expressive Drawer when opened slowly may say "I've had a full week." and when opened hurriedly "I've suffered this week." This explores the way my gender effects how I communicate on a day to day basis. While also exploring how a player can explore expression.

Future?

Noise Drawers is supported by a small number of private investors. Future funding will be sort after once prototyping is complete.
There is an opportunity to make this experience open source, so other musicians and designers can put their own content in!
Developing a non-VR option is also on the cards.
There is also the option to iterate upon this myself, as a performance and composition series.