Wednesday, October 05, 2016
'The Encounter' Brings The Sound Of The Amazon To Broadway
NPR: In 1969, an explorer and photographer named Loren McIntyre was dropped into the Amazon rainforest to try and make contact with a tribe called the Mayoruna. Now his story is headed to Broadway. The show uses binaural audio to play sounds of the rainforest in 3-D.
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4 comments:
This show looks so interesting! The idea of taking one explorer’s trip in the rainforest and converting it into a theatrical event. I love the idea of more immersive theatre events, something that really pulls you in to the actions happening not only onstage, but all around you. The sound design for this show must be so advanced, I’m interested to see exactly how all their technology works. It almost seems like a staged reading, but with more details put into the other designs. The visuals seems a bit weird, I’m wondering if the mannequin takes away from the immersive sound design. I would like to see this show even more fully realized. Like make the theatre more visually mirror a rainforest. If the design team did this I think the audience might truly believe that they are in and taking part of a rain forest exploration with their peers.
I’m so glad I stumbled upon this article because it was so fascinating! What was particularly interesting for me was that I was the Stage Manager for a Playground piece last year that used binaural audio. I had heard of a few immersive pieces, but they were all Off or Off-Off Broadway or abroad. What I think is particularly incredible about this show specifically is that it is on Broadway. And it is important to note, that the first show on Broadway to do something almost always means that it was done before on a smaller or different scale. However, for an immersive binaural production with this type of technology to garner these reviews and sell at this scale is incredible. Audiences are getting ready to move forward and to try different things. We only produce art that moves us if the art itself adapts as we move forward. We have to be willing to let that happen and I am so glad it is.
This is so damn cool. Theatre is definitely one of the places that could benefit from the growing business of virtual reality. I could see theaters looking for an experimental experience to utilize this tech--a fully immersive show in a smaller setting would be absolutely mind blowing, as it is taking VR to the next level by having all the action actually in front of you. This would almost be a really cool playground piece--if you found a way to utilize headphones for each viewer, and created a short performance based around this immersion, it could be really really cool. I really hope that other designers play with this idea in the future--the technology is only expanding and getting better every year, after all.
This is so incredibly cool. I love binaural audio because – honestly – who couldn’t. The really incredible part of this article and this production – which reading about it caused me to make a fool of myself in the Underground – is the fact that the live audio is transmitted via a binaural microphone on stage, so that there is a lack of distinction between the world in your ears and the world in your eyes, even though your mind is telling you that there should be a large distinction. I know that it’s probably never going to be possible, but the fact that there are headphones does effect the experience for me because it is live theatre. As much as I want to push technology and push theatre – especially to become more immersive – I never want to compensate how the audience’s experience is on a basic level, and doing things like having them wear headphones does alter that experience. That being said, this production being on Broadway is an enormous advancement and I’m excited to see where binaural audio is headed in the years to come – especially with its introduction to more accessible DAWs like Apple’s Logic.
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