Monoliths: Exploring voice, spatial audio and landscapes in virtual reality

Project partners: Pilot Theatre and the University of York

Pilot Theatre used XR Stories funding to develop their project, Monoliths.

Click here to view the video with audio description.

Pilot Theatre is an international touring theatre company, who specialise in interactive and participatory productions, focusing on the changing relationship between technology and live performances. Pilot Theatre collaborated with academics from the University of York to deliver this project.

Monoliths explored the use of virtual reality and audio soundscaping (audio that listeners would normally hear in a real environment), to create a unique immersive storytelling experience that celebrates the stories of three young women whose origins are tied to the Northern landscape where they have grown up. They are monoliths – standing stones – each one a powerful and influential force in her own right.

Audiences will experience three artistically rendered environments based on real outdoor locations in the Northern landscape: The Moor, The City and The Coast. Original poetic monologues are delivered using spatially recorded voices, combined with the soundscapes of real locations.

The project has enabled Pilot Theatre to explore fusing real audio soundscapes of a location, with 3D rendered environments.

Pilot Theatre is currently exploring how to extend Monolith’s theatrical presentation and technological augmentation, with a view to touring it around the North of England.

This project was funded through the OpenXR funding call.

Categories: Arts, Technology