Composing for Hyperreal Immersive Sound Systems
Commissioned by the University of Greenwich in partnership with L-ISA Immersive Sound Art to create a new work for their Ocean Surround Sound system in Highgate, London.
This project was funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund and I had the opportunity to works alongside project director Dr. Andrew Knight-Hill (University of Greenwich) and Paula Fairfield (Sound Designer for Game of Thrones). Together we created new compositions to test L-Acoustics new groundbreaking L-ISA technology. "L-ISA uses 24 channel speakers to provide an immersive audio experience particularly suited to enhancing spatial awareness in audio, such as in virtual reality gaming, surround sound film and music."
For this commission I wrote a new soundscape work using mainly night time field recordings from Brisbane and Florida with a focus on frog calls. Some of these recordings were made my colleague Rick Nance when we attended a residency together at Atlantic Center for the Arts working with composer Jonty Harrison. The recordings were analysed, taken apart and processed to create an immersive night-time soundscape weaving between real and imaginary spaces. I used the L-ISA object based panning system to spatialise the audio on the 24 channel Ocean Loudspeaker System. I have to say that the results were great and the system successfully made this piece sound even bigger and more immersive. I used mono and stereo recordings within the work which resulted in being able to place sound sources on fixed points within the space or spread these sounds across multiple loudspeakers. 360 degrees panning further facilitated and enhanced movement and gestures within the work.
My next task is to remix the piece for ambisonics and create other multi-channel and binaural formats that can easy be played on a variety of loudspeaker/headphone systems.
The works were presented over two concerts at L-ISA sound art gallery in July 2019.
I would sincerely like to thank Dr. Andrew Knight-Hill for organising this project.
Programme notes for new piece:
Frogland (2019) 24 Channel
Travelling to different places introduces us to new exotic soundscapes often dominated by pulsing rhythmic and static musical patterns. Frogland explores night-time field recordings from Florida and Brisbane which are dominated by crickets and frogs. A variety of sound design tools have been used to create this work such as spectral analysis and transformation and granular processing. The composition is also spatialised in 8-channel creating a hyper-real immersive soundscape. This is the 2nd piece in a series of soundscape works that explores night time sonic environments. Francis Dhomont’s fantastic work Signé Dionysos 1983-91 was of particular inspiration to me while writing this piece. I would like to thank composer Rick Nance for allowing me to use some of his Frog recordings for this piece. This work has been commissioned by Greenwich University with funding from the (HEIF) Higher Education Innovation Fund. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Hill for organising this project.
This project was funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund and I had the opportunity to works alongside project director Dr. Andrew Knight-Hill (University of Greenwich) and Paula Fairfield (Sound Designer for Game of Thrones). Together we created new compositions to test L-Acoustics new groundbreaking L-ISA technology. "L-ISA uses 24 channel speakers to provide an immersive audio experience particularly suited to enhancing spatial awareness in audio, such as in virtual reality gaming, surround sound film and music."
For this commission I wrote a new soundscape work using mainly night time field recordings from Brisbane and Florida with a focus on frog calls. Some of these recordings were made my colleague Rick Nance when we attended a residency together at Atlantic Center for the Arts working with composer Jonty Harrison. The recordings were analysed, taken apart and processed to create an immersive night-time soundscape weaving between real and imaginary spaces. I used the L-ISA object based panning system to spatialise the audio on the 24 channel Ocean Loudspeaker System. I have to say that the results were great and the system successfully made this piece sound even bigger and more immersive. I used mono and stereo recordings within the work which resulted in being able to place sound sources on fixed points within the space or spread these sounds across multiple loudspeakers. 360 degrees panning further facilitated and enhanced movement and gestures within the work.
My next task is to remix the piece for ambisonics and create other multi-channel and binaural formats that can easy be played on a variety of loudspeaker/headphone systems.
The works were presented over two concerts at L-ISA sound art gallery in July 2019.
I would sincerely like to thank Dr. Andrew Knight-Hill for organising this project.
Programme notes for new piece:
Frogland (2019) 24 Channel
Travelling to different places introduces us to new exotic soundscapes often dominated by pulsing rhythmic and static musical patterns. Frogland explores night-time field recordings from Florida and Brisbane which are dominated by crickets and frogs. A variety of sound design tools have been used to create this work such as spectral analysis and transformation and granular processing. The composition is also spatialised in 8-channel creating a hyper-real immersive soundscape. This is the 2nd piece in a series of soundscape works that explores night time sonic environments. Francis Dhomont’s fantastic work Signé Dionysos 1983-91 was of particular inspiration to me while writing this piece. I would like to thank composer Rick Nance for allowing me to use some of his Frog recordings for this piece. This work has been commissioned by Greenwich University with funding from the (HEIF) Higher Education Innovation Fund. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Hill for organising this project.
