Designing a spatialised binaural environment
Interview with Géraldine Aliberti, artistic director of Les Clés de l'écoute
In March 2022, the immersive sound experience Berlioz Trip was presented at the Grenier à sel in Avignon (France), with the support of the Orchestre national Avignon-Provence. This singular symphonic music outreach project welcomed nearly 2,000 people over three weeks, including secondary school pupils, students, non-native speakers, people in social care, families and adults.
Artistic director Géraldine Aliberti looks back at the beginnings of this innovative digital outreach project and how it helps foster dialogue with new audiences.
The history of music has many examples of interactive work: in the 20th century with John Cage or Stockhausen, who wrote aleatoric music. That's what really interests me: designing interactive experiences by imagining an encounter with the audience from the start. Digital technology allows you to do that!
Berlioz Trip was initially commissioned by the Philharmonie de Paris for its opening in 2015. The idea was to create an original stage show to complement the philharmonic concerts on Berlioz. This project allowed me to develop an immersive experience in spatialised sound on a tablet, capable of enriching the spectator's experience before and after the performance. It offers everyone the opportunity to enter the mind of Hector Berlioz and to share his dreams - or rather his nightmares!
Digital technology is a fascinating tool with regard to the audience, but I see it above all as a way of retranslating Berlioz's vision as faithfully as possible. He wanted to offer a concert with 467 musicians between the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille, with the audience in the middle! The only example of such an expensive device is in the Vatican for the Pope. Here, thanks to augmented reality, it is the audience that walks through the concert while changing its acoustic perception as the concert progresses. This innovation in sound spatialisation allows each user to hear La Symphonie fantastique as if he or she were moving among the musicians of the orchestra.
Immersive sound has been around for a long time. For example, church architecture is designed for immersive music. And each type of church makes it possible to imagine different ones. For Berlioz, we use a modern device with simple headphones. We go beyond binaural because we allow the spectator to move around the sound space and to change their perception of the sound. On the left, they will hear double basses, on the right, the flutes. The instruments move around the spectator, which creates an extremely lively sensation! The device does not move, the spectator moves within it.
I am particularly happy with the result because, from the beginning, I imagined this project as a way to reach new audiences, who never go to concerts, and to make them feel emotions they would never have felt listening to a recording or attending a lecture.