 I'm Clovis McAvoy, and I'm studying a master of music in Sonic Arts composition. When I was first looking at institutions that I might want to study at, Auckland seemed to have the most diverse group of internationally recognised composers. Their interests included instrumental, Sonic Arts, technology. I didn't really see anywhere else that had such a unique collection of individuals. Over the last few years I've been looking at how we can integrate music into virtual reality environments and how the technology could be used to facilitate new artistic experiences for audiences. I was given a summer research scholarship and that facilitated me to really get started in this area and from there it became something of a passion. I began to create a series of studies exploring the different levels of interactivity for music in virtual reality. One of these studies I focused on just purely experiencing the environment. In this situation an audience member is largely passive, but it's not the same kind of passivity that you get with TV because the audience member can physically walk around a space and they can look wherever they like. So I termed this active observation instead of passive observation. This particular study was accepted to be presented as a five-day installation at the International Computer Music Conference in Daegu, South Korea, just this year. Many New Zealand students from Auckland have gone on to take on roles at other world-leading institutional bodies or are now freelance working composers in the community. I see the postgraduate study as an essential stepping stone towards becoming the kind of composer that I want to be. I really don't think I would have made anywhere near as many friends or professional connections anywhere else.