Symposium

Vocal Voids
Pip Greasley
De Montfort University
http://www.creativityandcognition.com/gallery/pgreasley/pgreasley.htm

Summary
About four months ago, I was experimenting in mapping the sound trails for a new work Astronaut for the UK National Space Centre’s planetarium. I’ve created most of the music and sound design for their productions – but this was different – it was for 360 degree full dome cinema. It’s unlike any conventional format – even 180, and because it’s fully immersive, there is no fixed frame, no spatial reference point around which to wrap sound. It’s as though the envelope of the dome takes control of the space and the once static viewpoint is free to roam. It’s flipped conventions; where once image defined viewpoint, sound now guides the viewer through the field of vision.

There was another phenomenon, too – even stranger. As I was being transported by the smart CGI imagery into a new spatial infinity, I was still aware of the physicality of architecture around me. It was though the building would materialise and dissolve away revealing an alternate fictive space. I enjoyed playing with this spatial simultaneity – not dissimilar to HUD systems in augmented reality.

The decisive factor in this was the sound and ones cognition of it. It can play tricks with visual perceptions: an 8.1 soundtrack should be describing infinity whilst natural acoustics delineate reality. But roles can reverse.

So, the strangest phenomenon of all was an almost hallucinatory sensation where neither fictive nor real worlds were quite in focus. Somehow the soundtrack was reading as a real acoustic space whilst the projected imagery seemed to become embodied within the domed surface. That’s when the building itself began to distort and morph into extraordinary shapes with the sound assuming the ambiguity of a hybrid acoustic.
Out of that experience comes Vocal Voids. A virtual oratorio where architecture and sound are generated as one.

Biography
Pip Greasley is a British sonic artist and composer who devised the award winning 5K Pursuit Opera (1991) for Channel Four TV. This ground-breaking work utilised a wired up velodrome to drive a non-linear drama where competing track cyclists control the plot, music and libretto. His work integrates sound into site specific or architectural environments; The Last Broadcast immersed live/robotics within a geodetic dome. He is currently spatial mapping the score for National Space Centre’s first Full Dome 360 cinema experience. He is a Visiting Lecturer at De Montfort University.