Multi-talented performing artist Björk, along with a world-class creative team, recently drew on the immersive power of d&b Soundscape to present a unique sound installation in Paris. With the expertise of Southby Productions, Nature Manifesto delivered an aural experience like no other to audiences at the Pompidou Centre . . .
The remarkable creative power of d&b Soundscape has been employed in Paris to enable Nature Manifesto – a unique, immersive sound installation by internationally-renowned artist Björk. Fusing art and ecological activism, consisted of Björk’s distinctive voice reciting her manifesto of nature’s future, accompanied by the cries of endangered and extinct animals, plus spectacular visuals created partly using AI tools.
Drawing on the creative possibilities of d&b Soundscape, Nature Manifesto was a haunting, immersive presentation using the latest technologies to convey the outlook for a natural world in crisis.
The presentation was created by Björk in collaboration with artist Aleph Molinari (event curator and the manifesto’s co-writer) and IRCAM (the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) to draw attention to the ongoing collapse of Earth’s biodiversity. It was designed exclusively for presentation within the Pompidou Centre, Paris’ multilevel, multicultural hub for arts and literature.
In its aim to create an absorbing sound experience for audiences, the work drew heavily on the d&b Soundscape immersive audio system, with technical support provided by Southby Productions, the London-based specialist in d&b Soundscape technology.
Bjork worked in collaboration with artist Robin Meier Wiratunga to create the richly layered sound material, with its “orchestra” of animal voices. One of the biggest challenges facing the Southby sound team of Digby Shaw and Joel Gosling was to make the immersive listening experience as inclusive as possible, not just for a static audience across the Pompidou Centre’s interior levels, but for those on the move, travelling within the building’s iconic exterior ‘caterpillar’ escalator tube.
“Once we had made significant progress on the composition, the question became how to present it in such a unique space as the caterpillar,” says Meier Wiratunga. “Spatialization quickly became the central focus of this creation and mixing process.”
With so many creative and technology stakeholders, there were a number of ideas and tools involved, including IRCAM’s SPAT software – a real-time spatial audio processor. “d&b Soundscape is perfect to collate all these different trajectories, even different technologies – such as SPAT – and transpose it from the studio environment and into the Pompidou,” says Shaw. “It exists to create unique listening environments for the audience – even if they are moving through six storeys in Paris!”
A single DS100 signal engine provided the processing required for the d&b Soundscape system, playing through 70 point source loudspeakers from d&b’s compact E-Series. A ring of six E8 cabinets, plus an ultra compact B8 subwoofer, served each level of the Pompidou Centre, while each corresponding section of escalator was covered by eight E5s. The entire system was powered via 20 5D amplifiers.
“This was a unique challenge,” says Shaw. “Wayne Powell, d&b’s Global Artist Relations Manager, was instrumental in making the project happen, as was Robin Vieville and everyone at the Pompidou Centre who went out of their way to accommodate us.”
Says Meier Wiratunga, “d&b Soundscape is a technology that really complements what we develop here at IRCAM. We’re used to using the point source of sound, but Soundscape offers us a different way of working with space, moving sources in space.”
Presented as part of the forum Biodiversity: Which culture for which future? this project successfully combined the avant garde of both artistic creativity and presentation technology. As Pompidou Centre curator Chloé Siganos says, “Technology today isn’t just a tool; it serves creativity, and I find it amazing when art and technology come together in service of the narrative. This is where the future of live performance lies.”