AN ABSTRACTED FALCON – THE VISIONARY CALATRAVA DESIGNED PAVILION.
The UAE Pavilion at the World Expo is a stunning architectural feat, designed to showcase the country’s history, culture, and vision for the future. In addition to its impressive visual elements, the pavilion also features a dynamic and engaging sound design, which helps to enhance the overall visitor experience.
The sound design at the UAE Pavilion is a multi-sensory experience, featuring a combination of ambient noise, music, interactive audio and sound effects. As visitors make their way through the pavilion, they are surrounded by soundscapes that transport them to different parts of the country and immerse them in its culture.
One of the highlights of the sound design is the use of traditional Emirati music.
In addition to the music, the sound design also features a variety of ambient noise, such as the sounds of waves crashing on the shore, desert winds blowing, and the bustling streets of Dubai. These sounds help to create a sense of place and transport visitors to different parts of the country.
CLICK ABOVE TO VIEW THIS IMPRESSIVE COLLABORATION.
THE IMPRESSIVE CALATRAVA DESIGNED UAE PAVILION
Over the course of a year, we worked tirelessly to design all of the sound and systems for this prestigious pavilion & event. This installation project encompassed the entire visitor experience, from the entrance booths, oasis gardens, an abstracted ‘falaj’, a multi-exhibition underground gallery with multiple projections, immersive audio designs, interactive sound & visual pieces, an impressive 54 speaker 200 seat spatial dome theatre and a glorious atrium.
During our process, the world went into lockdown. We created a custom and ingenoius VR prototyping system to continue to collaborate and design the AV with the huge team of artists and creatives spread around the globe.
The Desert Of Dreams is an incredible gallery and journey through the vision of the UAE, from past to present – brought to life in a meandering journey through an abstracted desert, moving through abstractions of the past, present and future. Within this journey we created 3 interactive sound designs and numerous soundscapes, which we seamlessly integrated into the space with our custom calibrated and designed control and software systems.
DESERT OF DREAMS – ABSTRACTION OF THE EVOLUTION.
CROSSROADS – A BEAUTIFUL IMAGINATIVE ARTWORK
In the above clip, we showcase the design for our custom interactive audio system – Nomadic Life – allowing the sounds of the Bedouin nomads to eminante through inverted shadows created by the visitors. Our custom system takes in control and position data from a generative visual system using motion tracking.
In the Building The Nation area the dunes become encased in glass. Our sound design and mix allowed seamless feathering of this transition as well as precise localisation of music and sound design elements.
In ‘Crossroads’ we created a flowing, timed seascape design with abstracted sounds of the fishing & pearl diving culture, reproduced on an 8 speaker immersive ring of speakers.
A spatial audio mirage, controlled with object data input via a visual tracking system, Near Future showcases a beautiful futurist vision of the UAE. Our audio system precisely places each sound design and depicts the subtle nuances of our sound design. We carefully designed sounds of the future and brought the interactive work to life using Max/MSP into a seamless display.
WATCH NEAR FUTURE IN ACTION – CLICK ABOVE
An impressive 200 seat spherical cinema, Dreaming Together sports a 54 speaker wrap-around spatial audio array. We designed a soundscape for this immersive film, and worked closely with composer Matthew Herbert and his sound team to install this marvel of sound and technique. Utilising our own custom transcoding tools along with SPAT, we were able to precisely place sound objects and immerse the audience in this captivating story. Our process was meticulous from the very beginning, bringing in a specialised team to calibrate and voice each speaker, we then pre-mixed the design and the complex show mechanics in our Cape Town studios, followed by a detailed mixing session un Dubai. Our VR prototyping tool added value to the entire process too, allowing us to create iterative mixes and visual models before our build out phase.
WATCH DREAMING TOGETHER IN THE PEARL THEATRE.
THE PEARL THEATRE – A 54 SPEAKER SPATIAL AUDIO EXPERIENCE
The Pearl Theatre features a unique rising floor, taking the audience from the basement floor to the ground floor of the exhibition. This required a specialised audio mix, needing to shift the focal points of the design constantly throughout the show’s runtime. A truly impressive feat and the result is captivating.
Working closely with the AV team, we specified a full Tectonics DML speaker system for these installations, resulting in a very unique sonic experience. Our VR prototyping engine allowed us to create multiple iterative mixes for the space, and along with this we designed abstracted sonic moments representative of the Dreamers being portrayed. This was a truly lovely, introspective space fitting for such a prestigious architectural masterpiece.
WATCH ‘DREAMERS WHO DO’ – CLICK ABOVE
We collected the sounds of the UAE’s diverse wildlife, and designed a unique and first ever custom QSYS use case, where our detailed garden had the ability to seamlessly adapt and change throughout the day, morphing from morning, afternoon and night-time soundscapes. Even more compelling, we took real-time ‘Call to Prayer’ data from the web, and used this to adapt our garden sounds when the surrounding Mosques had their scheduled prayer times – paying respect to the rich culture of the UAE. Our creatures in the garden even displayed excitement before the prayer times, with a hush during them!
WATCH OASIS – CLICK ABOVE
The ‘biographs’, with their various viewports each having designed sound pieces, were a beautiful waiting experience for the guests. Along with contextual soundscapes, each biograph gives the guests an insight into the rich cultural history and development of the UAE. Along with the biographs, we also designed a custom entrace gate soundscape and ticketing audio system mechanic.
We worked tirelessly for many months designing custom audio solutions and systems in order to deliver this prestigious project. Our excellent team of skilled engineers and technicians created software solutions, acoustics analysis, and sound designs for each area and system. We worked closely with the AV installation team to curate and customise each exhibit. On-site, our team solved numerous design constraints and worked day and night to meet our client’s needs and bring their creative visions to life.
CUSTOM MAX/MSP DESIGN IN OUR CAPE TOWN STUDIOS.
We created custom software using modified Max/MSP solutions, and along with this a detailed on site realtime mixing interface, allowing our creative team to make their own decisions.
ON SITE DEPLOYMENT WITH OUR TEAM
OUR CUSTOM SPAT MIXING TEMPLATES FOR THE PEARL
The global pandemic created the need for us all to work in VR. We designed a custom workflow for the various audio & visual teams to collaborate and design inside VR. A world’s first, we created a custom point-source audio mixing solution, allowing us to create real time mixes from our studio workstations inside the VMPE, affording us endless iterative possibilities and giving us all clear Creative decision-making and direction.
VMPE BEING CREATED
Our VR software had an integrated mixer panel, allowing for detailed balance decisons and snapshots; giving the various crewative directors the option to hear and save instances.