Space, Place, Sound, and Memory: Immersive Experiences of the Past

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Listening to music is an experiential activity that connects listeners to their surroundings and to those around them. In part, the recent growth of the live performance industry is a direct consequence of this need to connect and share musical experiences in a communal space.But the transient nature of live performance presents real challenges. The physical properties and locations of spaces impose constraints on the nature of events and the geographical reach of performances, and, while recordings can capture the sound of performance, they stop short of allowing the listener to feel a sense of presence and participation. This is a challenge that is only amplified when one considers early music performances: even a curated performance in a modern venue loses much of the detail that characterises historic performance.Immersive technologies offer huge potential for modern audiences to experience these transient qualities, and for allowing performers to recreate historic performances as they would originally have been experienced. This project brings together cross-disciplinary expertise from a range of academic, industry and cultural partners to explore the point where performance practice, gaming and VR, technology, and culture and heritage meet.We will use 3D imaging, binaural and surround sound, and room-impulse responses to create a software application that allows users to experience the performance of early music in an accurately-modelled historic space. The development of this application will draw on the development experience of our technical partner, Biome Collective, who have significant experience of using mobile technologies to create immersive augmented reality experiences.We will work with two contrasting spaces and related repertories: St Cecilia's Hall and Rosslyn Chapel. Both sites benefit from pre-existing architectural research, and there are extensive records of historical concerts, which will enable us to recreate particular musical events using instruments from the Russell Collection, and a performance of a sung liturgical service by the renowned Binchois Consort in combination with our software.From an audience perspective we will explore how immersive media technologies might bring us closer to the original experience of early music, while from the perspective of performers and musicologists, it will allow us, for the first time, to explore systematically concepts of space and place within the context of historic performance.Through the process of creating this new technology, we will explore and create an outline taxonomy of the key psycho-physical cues that promote the sense of presence and immersion within a shared simulated performance space, describe how they combine to create convincing spaces, and investigate the methods that allow us to measure their efficacy.By hosting the Binchois Consort's performance in virtual space, we will also have the opportunity to explore a number of questions relating to performance that have the potential to serve as the basis for a much deeper follow-on investigation: To what extent does performing in a virtual space impact upon performance practice? What are the challenges and opportunities involved in bringing together musicians and audiences who are geographically remote to a co-located virtual space? How might immersive media technologies change how we curate physical and digital performance spaces? How might they be used to develop existing audiences and reach new ones, particularly those who are hard-to-reach?This final question is of direct commercial relevance, particularly to our partner organisation, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, who are committed to using technology as a tool to develop audiences and extend their existing outreach work, suggesting a possible avenue for commercialisation and further development. The RSNO have kindly agreed to assist us in working directly with their audiences for user testing.