STRING THEORY

Summary

An immersive installation where different soundscapes reveal a ritual of connection.

Taking audiences through three sound environments that prioritise the aural over the visual, STRING THEORY is an abstract and tender examination of the ritual of musicians’ tuning their instruments before a performance. It begins in a lobby area where the audience first hears the sounds of the musicians’ bodies; settling, breathing, stretching and is delivered through binaural audio in headphones so that these intimate noises become even more affecting.

The second space is a haze filled room, a forest of fog in which the abstract sounds of musicians tuning their instruments are virtual objects to be found. The audio soundscape here is spatial so that the audience has to move to find each ‘sound-tree’, exploring through the mist.

Finally, the third space is a reveal. A DJ on stage plays electronic music made up from loops of the tuning sounds of the musicians. The audience hears through headphones, silent disco style. Behind the DJ a large projector screen shows the images behind the sounds the audience had been experiencing, revealing the hands, mouths and instruments of the musicians in ultra close up.

STRING THEORY was created as a collaboration between artists from Mexico, Ghana and the UK.

‘Immersive audio works are underrated, so it’s nice to see a piece like this and it’s very interesting to me, ‘for an audience to go through binaural to spacial audio is very interesting, different worlds of sound… to have a different approach to sound from one room to the other is interesting, I really think there is a strong interest there’

– Myriam Achard – Head of New Media, Phi Centre

‘Each of those three rooms were really evocative, interesting spaces’, ‘the aspect of having no hardware on your body and just experiencing the space physically, I really loved that’.

– Ruthie Doyle – Head of Interdisciplinary Program, Sundance Institute

For more information about Immersive Assembly please email Willow@yorkmediale.com

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