AES Show 2024 NY

The popularity of internet-based services for delivering media, i.e., audio and video on demand, creates an opportunity to offer personalized media experiences to audiences. A significant proportion of users are experiencing reduced enjoyment, or facing inaccessibility, due to combinations of different impairments, languages, devices and connectivity, and preferences. Audio currently leads video in the maturity of object-based production and distribution systems; thus, we sought to leverage existing object-based audio tools and frameworks to explore creation and delivery of personalized versions. In this practice-based investigation of personalization affordances, an immersive children’s fantasy radio drama was re-authored within five "dimensions of personalization", motivated by an analysis of under-served audiences, to enable us to develop an understanding of what and how to author personalized media. The dimensions were Duration, Language, Style, Device and Clarity. Our authoring approaches were designed to result in alternative versions that are inherently inter-compatible. The ability to combine them exploits the properties of object-based audio and creates the potential for mass personalization, even with a modest number of options within each of the dimensions. The result of this investigation is a structured set of adaptations, based around a common narrative. Future work will develop automation and smart network integration to trial the delivery of such personalized experiences at scale, and thereby validate the benefits that such forms of media personalization can bring.