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TiMax spatialisation for Culture Mile’s Tunnel Visions: Array in Beech Street tunnel

Part of this year’s Barbican OpenFest in London saw a major new Culture Mile light and sound installation take place in the Beech Street tunnel, opposite Barbican Underground. Culture Mile presented Tunnel Visions: Array which transformed the tunnel into an audio-visual performance space combining projection and sound technology with the Barbican’s architecture.

Created by 59 Productions led by director Richard Slaney, co-produced with the Barbican, and with music by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, sound designer Gareth Fry was commissioned to create a multi-channel spatial sound design for the immersive multimedia art project, using TiMax SoundHub-S64 spatial audio matrix and playback engine.

TiMax directed the audio playback of 30 channels of audio stems and effects tracks from its on-board playback engine, including SMPTE timecode, making for quick and complex rendering of spatial pan effects, multitrack mix automation and precise synchronisation with visual content.

Using a dedicated SMPTE timecode track striped onto its internal SSD drive, TiMax controlled and synchronised a stack of Disguise video-mapping media servers. Forty projectors mounted on speaker towers distributed down the tunnel were arranged in a crossfire configuration to video-map every wall and ceiling surface. The end result was a single 3D screen with abstract and dynamically-animated video art, synchronised to the music and TiMax immersive spatial events.

The full 70-metre length of the Beech Street Tunnel was covered by a distributed system of 40 individual Meyer UPJ active cabinets and 20 sub bass units. Individual outputs from TiMax were networked to these on a redundant Dante network then connected via four satellite Yamaha Rio32 breakout boxes.

The loudspeakers were positioned facing the walls, pointing away from the audience, with the audio bounced off specially designed sound reflector panels. With the roving audience coming to within a couple of metres of the projection towers, the panels provided a diffusion of the sound by softening on-axis response. The 8-band parametric output EQ from TiMax helped to tune out any artefacts arising from this slight divergence from manufacturers recommended modus operandi for their speaker products.

The TiMax system was implemented and programmed in pre-production and on-site at the Barbican Beech Street tunnel by Out Board’s Robin Whittaker, as Gareth Fry was committed to tech rehearsals for the Broadway opening of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’.

(Photos: Justin Sutcliffe)

www.outboard.co.uk

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