Immersive Theatre Sound Design

"Ice-Time" is an immersive video installation combining science and art. The artwork creates a singular cinematic portrait of ice, ranging from vast glaciers to individual crystals, in a poetic response to the accelerating changes we are currently observing in Earth's ecosystem. "Ice-Time" elicits the poetics of frozen water revealed by current geological research. The artwork documents this moment in glacial space-time, expressing the beauty and the rationality of ice at odds with the devastating chaos its disappearance portends. In the installation, contrasting visual scales and supra-human speeds of observation reveal the essence of ice.

The immersive cine-installation occupies a hexagonal architecture, echoing the structure of water crystals. Six large projections and a 9.1-channel, three-dimensional ambisonic soundscape create a room-sized environment. The juxtaposition of elements transfigures as visitors navigate the space in an embodied, dynamic montage.

The "Ice-Time" project approach demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary art-science research and collaboration as it distills contemporary culture's psychic moment of a data-driven reality. Through a vivid, material presence of image, sound, data, and time, the immersive film establishes a somatic interaction of form and content. The installation imbues the spectator with an awareness of the environmental and cultural implications of polar ice and the essential role ice plays in anthropogenic climate change.

This study discusses the key terms of presence and authenticity as well as introducing the connection and distinction between Theatre of the Real and Reality TV. It goes on to investigate the work of Quarantine Theatre through an analysis of the company’s 2010 production of 'Susan & Darren' , which is performed by mother and son, Susan and Darren Pritchard. The third element of the essay is a description and analysis of a piece of theatre of the real, 'Mike & Karen', conceived by myself in order to further investigate an audience’s understanding of “authentic presence”  in live performance.

This investigation takes two distinct approaches: an analysis of a Quarantine Theatre production based on interviews with members of the production team, time spent in rehearsals and observation of the finished production; and also the development and presentation of my own performance piece, initiated before my contact with Quarantine, but subsequently influenced by conversations with members of the company and by their working methods. My research questions attempt to address what “authentic presence” offers to theatre-makers, how practitioners attempt to manifest presence within these specific examples and what impact this has on an audience .

In this interview extract, George Home-Cook reflects on what it means to be ‘immersed in sound’. Steering clear of the natural tendency to set hearing (distractedness) over and against listening (attentiveness), Home-Cook invites us to reconsider aural immersion in dynamic terms. He urges us to pay closer attention to the dynamics of embodied attending: immersion is ‘dynamic embodied attending in the world’ (Arvidson 2006; emphasis original). Referring to Sound&Fury’s Kursk, the interview considers the particularities of conducting a phenomenology of theatrical listening.

In Gravity (2013), Alfonso Cuarón introduced a fully three-dimensional sound design approach that was originally termed by Idrovo and Pauletto (2019) as ‘immersive point-of-audition’. More recently, in Netflix’s Roma (2018), Cuarón not only perfected such treatment of sound, but consolidated an audio-visual style that stands out for its capacity to enhance our sensation of ‘presence’ in the narrative world, a style that is referred here to as immersive continuity. Grounded on the spatiotemporal continuity of the long take, Cuarón’s immersive continuity allows sound objects to flow all around the 3-D space, and hence opens a giant window of opportunity for the exploitation of Dolby Atmos. Through an extensive analysis of Roma, this article describes the aesthetics of such audio-visual style, and beyond, it explores the methods and workflows that permitted Cuarón’s sound team to fully exploit sound three-dimensionality. Finally, I discuss the growing adoption of Netflix as one of the major challenges that the theatrical cinema industry has to face; and argue that embracing immersive continuity may be a powerful weapon for attracting audiences to a cinematic experience that cannot be found at home.