SPATIAL CHAMBER
EXPLORATION
A spatial audio experience of Sylvie Guillem’s “Bolero” dance (2016) with 15 speakers.
In live ballet performances with an orchestra, such as in the Royal Opera House, part of the magic is the spatial relationship between instruments in the orchestra. Between this, and the dancers’ movements, the audience has a world of light and sound they can move around in freely, focusing on different dancers and different sounds to their heart’s content.
This kind of immersive experience is difficult to deliver in a small venue with a reduced band or pre-recorded music. As a first attempt at achieving it, I converted the sound from the TV recording of Sylvie Guillem’s final performance into spatial audio, and put it on as a experience at the RCA’s photography studio.
As people came in to experience it, their first intuition was to lay down and soak in all the sound.
The Process