Handheld display device for navigating a virtual environment

Departing from one-way linear cinema played on a single rectangular screen, this multi-channel virtual environment involves a cinematic paradigm that undoes habitual ways of framing things, employing architectural concepts in a polylinear video/sound construction to create a type of experience that allows the world to reveal itself and permits discovery on the part of participants. Techniques are disclosed for peripatetic navigation through virtual space with a handheld computing device, leveraging human spatial memory to form a proprioceptive sense of location, allowing a participant to easily navigate amongst a plurality of simultaneously playing videos and to center in front of individual video panes in said space, making it comfortable for a participant to rest in a fixed posture and orientation while selectively viewing any one of the video streams, and providing spatialized 3D audio cues that invite awareness of other content unfolding simultaneously in the virtual environment.