The Forest of Timber

Audiovisual Storytelling | Independent Project

This immersive experience envisions a forest under a starry night where elements that are usually silent are reimagined through the textures of sound. Inspired by the timbre of different musical instruments, it explores how the qualities of sound evoke visual and material sensations. Streams, trees, stones, and insects each correspond to distinct sonic characters. This experience creates a poetic connection between music and nature, allowing the audience to perceive the wandering in the forest as a quiet yet expressive musical journey shaped by imagined sound.

TOOLS

Unreal Engine, MAX/MPS

INSTRUCTOR

Professor Ivica Ico Bukvic

TIME

April 2026 - May 2026

AFFILIATION

Indiana University Bloomington, Media School

PROTOTYPE VIDEO

The CONCEPT

In this project, I wanted to explore the synesthesia between timbre and visual elements. Timbre of different musical instruments reminds me of different natural elements, for example the piano sounds like the droplets constantly drop on the stream, and the flute sounds like the wind flowing through tree branches. There is research about visual-auditory synesthesia between sound and color. For example, Mallion put forward "timbre isomorphism synesthesia" linking musical notes to specific colors to create a sensory experience (Mao et.al., 2023). I want to think about it further through the material texture and the feeling of music.

For the specific scene and experience design, I get more inspiration from artworks. When I listened to the piece Nightingale by the Greek composer Yiannis Chryssomallis (Yanni), I experienced a vivid sensory image created through the layering of different instruments, a moonlit forest accompanied by the song of a nightingale. Similarly, Tan Dun’s A Drop of Water from Heaven, a live water performance staged in a traditional Chinese courtyard in Shanghai, deeply inspired me. In this work, he transforms architectural space into a musical instrument by directing water in different ways throughout the courtyard, integrating it with live music. Although I am not a composer like Yanni or Tan Dun, their work inspired me to imagine the combination of natural elements and musical expression, and how musical experience can be shaped by the space.

In addition, TeamLab’s installation, Resonating Trees, which turns wandering through a forest into an immersive audio-visual experience, further influenced my thinking. It inspired me to design a free, exploratory experience in which people move through a forest and encounter different music along their journey, created through interactions with the natural environment.

The Sketch of Movement in the Scene

The Conncetion of Sounds and Forest Elements

THE VISUAL SCENE

The visual environment was constructed step by step, moving from large-scale terrain to fine detail.

Landscape: Using Unreal's Landscape tool, I sculpted the base terrain, shaping gentle hills, depressions, and low-lying paths that would later define where water naturally sit.
Water: Water bodies (streams and small pools) were placed along the carved depressions in the terrain.
Plants: Trees and ground foliage were planted using Unreal's foliage tools to build out the forest. An early version with dense, full-coverage vegetation caused performance crashes, so the foliage density and instance count were iteratively reduced.
Animals: Animated creatures (birds and deers) were placed.
Lighting: Finally, the lighting was tuned to evoke a quiet starry night: soft directional moonlight, low ambient fill, and subtle atmospheric/volumetric effects to keep the mood calm and contemplative rather than dramatic.

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The sculpturing of landscape

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The Adjustment of Lighting

The Edition of Plants

The Deer Animation for the Library

THE SPATIAL AUDIO

The sonic identity of the forest was built in two stages, finding the right material, then spatializing it.

Finding the music: Suitable music clips and instrumental textures were found from Pixabay, chosen to match the intended timbral character of each natural element, including flowing, continuous textures for streams, resonant, woody textures for trees, low and strong tones for stones, high-pitched and granular textures for fireflies, and a cheerful, smooth waltz for the bouncing tree stumps and the small deer.
Bringing it into Max/MSP: These audio clips were imported into Max/MSP as the raw sound sources for each element.
Spatializing with D4: Using D4, a spatial audio tool provided by my instructor, each sound source was spatialized within Max/MSP, giving the music a sense of position and distance in space. This made it possible for the sound field to shift naturally as the listener moves through the forest, turning the act of walking into an act of listening.
Timing the sequence: Following the route through the forest envisioned earlier in the design process, a timeline was worked out in Max so that the audio clips could be arranged in sequence.

The Spatialization of an Audio Clip

The Testing of an Audio Clip

THE UNREAL-MAX COMMUNICATION

The two systems were linked via OSC (Open Sound Control), enabling audiovisual interactions.

Animation triggers audios: Blueprint events in Unreal send OSC messages to Max/MSP, which receives them and triggers or modulates the corresponding instrumental texture in real time.
Sound influences visuals: Max/MSP analyzes the amplitude and frequency content of the sound and sends the resulting parameters to Unreal via OSC. These values drive visual responses.