// virtual reality & immersive design

Catherine Bevan

I specialize in designing and implementing interactive spatial audio for VR experiences, bringing heightened immersion and dynamism to each project. Using industry-standard software such as Unity, the XR Interactive Toolkit, and Wwise audio middleware, my work in VR culminated in the solo development of my Masters thesis: a 10-15 minute VR experience which sought to provide artistic reflection upon the act of self-disclosing to technology.

// vr_showreel.mp4

// testimonials

I’ve worked with a lot of audio engineers, and it is important for me to express how rare [Cat's work] is. Cat exceeded my experience with some of the top (and well awarded) composers I’ve worked with in the past. I would recommend Cat for any project, company or client.

Lloyd Summers Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Red Iron Labs

Cat was the audio lead in a major VR work [the Audio Games Lab] created. Her technical and creative work on this project was fantastic, and I learned much from her during that process. I was really impressed by her ability to navigate difficult issues around collaboration and group work.

Scott Smallwood Professor & Head of the Audio Games Lab, UAlberta

Catherine has wonderful creativity, talent and skill, is reliable for delivering beyond what is asked, demonstrates genuine dedication to creating a quality product, and has an openness to learning new things in order to help the team.

Owen Cooper Supervising Technical Sound Designer, Hexany Audio

As a media artist, Cat is truly a force of transdisciplinary creativity! She merges the technical expertise of game and VR development with the expressive depth of sound composition. She's rigorous, genre-defying, and her enthusiasm is as compelling as her work.

PB Berge Assistant Professor & Experimental Game Designer, UAlberta

// selected_works

never left

ROLE:Solo Developer YEAR:2025

never left is an attempt to artistically reappropriate and re-sanctify the act of self-disclosing to technology. Prompting the player with the question "Where do you call home?", the game presents the player with a large virtual space through which to fly and reflect upon glitch-like visuals, navigable music, and anonymously sourced answers to the aforementioned question, eventually culminating in the opportunity for the player to submit their own answer.

My first "solo dev" experience with VR, never left marked an important milestone in my VR/XR journey. Requiring intimate familiarity with Unity's XR Interactive Toolkit, dozens of C# scripts, the implementation and creation of hundreds of interactive audio assets, and even the fringe usage of Blender and other software tools, never left was an invaluable learning experience.

Read Thesis Watch Playthrough

Your Data Body

ROLE:Technical Audio Lead TEAM:Audio Games Lab @ UAlberta YEAR:2023

Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and artists across the University of Alberta, Your Data Body has been featured in several VR exhibits, including the Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality exhibit of 2023. Led by visual artist Marilene Oliver, the project grapples with how we interact with, and are responsible for, the data of others.

As the technical audio lead on a 4-person audio team, my responsibilities spanned establishing naming conventions for our hundreds of audio files, creating and maintaining asset tracking spreadsheets, editing and preparing audio as required to fit the needs of the game engine, and implementing each audio file using a combination of Unity scripting and Wwise audio middleware.

Supervisor Scott Smallwood and I were accepted to present on our work on Your Data Body at GameSoundCon 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

Learn More

Unleashed

ROLE:Sound, Implementation, Music YEAR:2023

Created in tandem with Red Iron Co-Founder Lloyd Summers and a small team of 3D artists, Unleashed was created in under 48 hours for the 2023 Alberta Game Jam. Unleashed is a simple game in which the player assumes the role of a creature attempting to escape military captivity.

Given the light horror themes, I set out to create subtle-yet-ominous music, a vaguely alien soundscape, and imposing enemy sound design. The majority of my focus however, was spent on implementing the audio in 3D space using the state-of-the-art spatial audio capabilities of Wwise and Unity. Realistic reverb zones seamlessly connected through sonic portals, ambisonics and binaural rendering for increased directional distinction, and life-like obstruction + diffraction on in-game objects all come together to create a truly immersive VR experience.