HOLOPLOT X1 goes into orbit with The Moonwalkers, Lightroom’s brand new immersive experience
Berlin, June 4, 2021.
The DARK MATTER exhibition, which opened its doors on June 4th, creates a parallel cosmos in which the boundaries between the real and digital worlds become blurred. Visitors embark on a journey through seven partly interactive installations. Light, movement and sound merge into emotional choreographies of luminous shapes and colors.
Behind the idea for DARK MATTER are light artist Christopher Bauder and his design studio WHITEvoid, known among other things for the 8,000 glowing balloons of the LICHTGRENZE installation on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. By cooperating with innovative technology partners such as HOLOPLOT, 15 years of technical innovation and creative vision are now bundled into a collection of unique light installations, some of which have never been shown publicly.
HOLOPLOT X1 provides the sound for the installation GRID
The central piece of the exhibition - GRID - combines kinetics, light and electronic music by artist Robert Henke to create a giant audiovisual sculpture that hovers above the audience. The installation symbolizes the merging of the digital and physical world, being both present and ephemeral at the same time.
The three-dimensional sound of the installation is provided by the X1 Matrix Array from HOLOPLOT. The X1 was launched in May and is now accessible to a broad audience for the first time. The objective of the audio installation for the GRID was to create a homogeneous and three-dimensional sound experience. Robert Henke adapted his musical composition to the new audio system and reinforced it with narrow beams. Visitors can thus fully immerse themselves in a fascinating universe of sound and light.
Challenges of immersive applications
Immersive exhibitions like DARK MATTER often face similar challenges.
Exhibition organizers want visitors to fully enjoy immersiveness across the entire space. Conventional loudspeaker technologies only deliver this performance in a limited area known as the sweet spot. An audience moving through the installation, however, should experience as little change in sound quality or volume as possible. The X1's 3D audio beamforming technology enables a seamless immersive experience. Thanks to the homogeneity of sound level distribution and spectral consistency across audience areas of any shape or size, each individual visitor is provided with an authentic and qualitatively uniform experience.
Sound should be focused as much as possible on a specified area to avoid disturbing adjacent installations. The software-controlled X1 system allows this flexible definition of listening areas, concentrating the sound on pre-defined zones, or actively omitting such zones. This also allows rooms with multiple parallel sound experiences to be played.
After all, the experience should be authentic, so that the visitor can be immersed in the installation without perceiving the actual audio technology. To achieve this, X1 offers an unprecedented level of realism and clarity in the reproduction of audio objects, which can be reconstructed in a lifelike manner. Virtual point sources can be placed in the room, creating sound objects close to the listener. "We are able to position visual elements, sound and music precisely and dynamically in space. This allows our visitors to experience completely new possibilities of artistic expression" says Christopher Bauder.
With its worldwide novel technology, the HOLOPLOT X1 audio system thus meets the requirements of a new generation of immersive applications, that combine technology, content and entertainment.
DARK MATTER exhibition, approx. 45 minutes, from June 4, 2021 at Köpenicker Chaussee 46, 10317 Berlin. darkmatter.com
As a performative 3D sound system, the HOLOPLOT hard- and software exceeds all our expectations.
