We are delighted at the news we’ve been shortlisted by the Event Production Awards under the category Best Use of Technology at an Event for our L-Acoustics L-ISA installation during the summer of 2021, at the Serpentine Pavilion!
The L-ISA system was used by a succession of artists as part of a themed exhibition called Back To Earth, highlighting the complex issues surrounding climate change and planet pollution.
The technology used to realise this piece had the same billing as the art, heralded by the exhibition curators with the words “presented in L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound.”
For Brian Eno’s contribution to Back to Earth, titled In A Garden (2021), he composed a layered, stratified and spatialised construction of sonic material that moved through the Serpentine Pavilion, from the earth beneath the attendees’ feet to the space above their heads. Eno’s concept was that of sound growing from beneath the visitors’ feet and blossoming around and above them, graduating from what attendees would recognise as surround sound to what we now identify as immersive audio.
Eno suggested a number of interesting techniques to make his piece as immersive an experience as possible, one of which was a rainfall sound starting directly centre overhead and then using multi-tap delays to create a slow descent of sound, starting from the very top and eventually falling all around the listener over time.
In another instance, Eno heard a motorbike go past while we were mixing one evening, and decided he wanted to include this in his piece. We were able to programme a motorbike sample moving around slowly in the background, and then travelling along the direction of the road so that attendees wouldn’t know if it was real or not, to blur the lines between reality and reproduced sound.
During composition this was an evolving piece, and you’d be hard pressed, without the kind of processing power or even the user interface of the L-ISA technology, to achieve the immersion as quickly as we did.
Delta Live’s Stephen Hughes (left) collaborates with Brian Eno (right).
Being recognised for the work we do at Delta Live is enormously flattering, and to be shortlisted alongside some of the industry’s leading companies and event professionals is without doubt satisfying.
The Event Production Awards (EPAs) are an annual celebration that aims to recognise the various individuals and teams that are behind the successful delivery of outdoor and live events over the past 12 months. The show will return on 17 February where the winners of each category will be announced, wish us luck!
Featured photos by @mariazhytnikova.
Delta Live
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