A LABORATORY FOR SPATIAL LISTENING
In January 2021, I began a residency at Florida International University’s i360 XR Theater at the invitation of L. Bryan Cooper, Associate Dean for Engagement & Innovation at FIU University Libraries and project director of the theater.
Installed in the Glenn Hubert Library in 2019, the i360 combines a twenty-foot-diameter cylindrical projection screen developed by Igloo with a Neumann/Sennheiser-based Dolby Atmos sound system. Bryan’s invitation grew partly from his 2018 visit to Audiotheque 2.0, my thirty-channel sound laboratory at ArtCenter/South Florida. He understood that my role could include not only creating new work, but helping refine the relationship between sound, image and the architecture of the theater.
FROM 5.1.4 TO 7.1.4
When I arrived, the theater used a professionally installed 5.1.4 system: five surrounding speakers, four overhead speakers and a subwoofer. In that configuration, the speakers covered only about three-quarters of the cylindrical room” leads directly into the limitation you encountered. This made it difficult to render sounds as coming from directly behind the audience.
During my first year, I conducted numerous experiments with the system but hesitated to create a finished site-specific work without knowing whether it would need to be reconstructed after the system was modified.
I experimented with adding two rear speakers and concluded that a 7.1.4 configuration would better serve the theater’s cylindrical architecture. With the approval of Sennheiser and assistance from Igloo and FIU’s technical staff, the additional speakers were installed and the system recalibrated.
The completed configuration surrounds the audience with seven horizontal speakers, four overhead speakers and a subwoofer. I refer to works prepared for this eleven-speaker spatial field as ATMOS 11.
AMBISONIC RESEARCH WITH DAVID DUNN
David Dunn and I used the i360 system to test experiments we had been conducting with first-order ambisonics.
For A Lambent Mirror for Remote Ontographies of Nested Infinities, David generated sound gestures through a home system combining dozens of electronic modules and digital plugins. He played the sounds through a surround speaker system and recorded the resulting spatial field with an ambisonic microphone, producing a four-channel first-order ambisonic file.
At the i360, I adapted a decoding patch David provided so the file could be distributed through the theater’s 7.1.4 system. I then adjusted its spatial behavior in response to the room and its speaker configuration.
In parallel, I composed CHAMBER and prepared it for the same system. David’s piece and mine were presented separately and together on different occasions as Frozen Music projects. Their eventual combination became Symbiosis, a collaborative ATMOS 11 work by David Dunn and me.
CYLINDER
In 2023, I began developing Cylinder as a work in progress specifically for the i360 XR Theater. Unlike It was conceived as an independent work specifically for the theater.
Cylinder brings spatialized resonant tones together with changing fields of color and public-domain photographic images. The theater’s cylindrical architecture and eleven-speaker sound field function as parts of the composition rather than simply as its container.
The final version was completed in 2024 and became part of the FIU i360 XR Theater collection. It was the last work I developed there to date. Its color fields were derived from the work’s resonant frequencies as interpreted by Freddy Jouwayed.
Cylinder — SCORE
CREDITS
Resident artist; system consultation, spatial adaptation and composition: Gustavo Matamoros
Project director: L. Bryan Cooper, MLIS, PhD, Associate Dean for Engagement & Innovation, FIU University Libraries
Ambisonic research and collaboration: David Dunn
Color-field interpretation for Cylinder: Freddy Jouwayed
Technical implementation: FIU technical staff, with assistance from Sennheiser and Igloo
Location: i360 XR Theater, Glenn Hubert Library, Florida International University, Biscayne Bay Campus
David Dunn — A Lambent Mirror for Remote Ontographies of Nested Infinities (PDF)
i360 FIU satellite-events poster, 2023 (PDF)