”la Caixa” Foundation presents Symphony, a journey to the heart of music under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel
Music and technology merge to give way to an experience that is unprecedented in Spain, thanks to the "la Caixa" Foundation. For the first time, the audience will be able to place themselves in the middle of a symphony orchestra thanks to virtual reality in CosmoCaixa. This project will subsequently begin a tour that will take in the main cities of Spain and Portugal over a period of ten years. The first stops planned are Santander (October-November), Valladolid (November-December) and Madrid (December-January). The premiere of this initiative has been sponsored by the conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The Deputy Director General of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Elisa Durán, the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and the founder of Igor Studio and director of the project, Igor Cortadellas, today presented Symphony, a virtual journey to the heart of classical music, according to a press release from the Foundation sent to the media.
The starting point of the project, which has been working on for more than four years, was to talk about the emotional power of music from an informative perspective. From the outset, the "la Caixa" Foundation was committed to virtual reality as the best way of explaining this story. The latest technology has made it possible to do what would otherwise not be possible: to sit next to the violins in a large symphony orchestra while they play Beethoven. The desire is to be able to seduce all kinds of audiences, including those who are already familiar with classical music. Symphony consists of two mobile units that unfold into two rooms of one hundred square metres each.
The second unit is dedicated to living the virtual reality experience. When the viewer puts on the glasses, he will see how his environment has suddenly changed. Now he is in the Gran Teatro del Liceo, sitting on a chair and the master Gustavo Dudamel, the soul of the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation, welcomes him. He will then be surrounded by the musicians of a symphony orchestra, all keeping silent, waiting for the director's indication, who will energetically give the entrance to Ludwig Van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The famous four notes that begin this symphony mark the beginning of the experience.
The spectator will see the musicians distributed on stage in their usual form, by families of strings, wind, brass, percussion, and will feel them very close in a real way, as well as live the energy and the look of the conductor, situated just in front of him. This musical experiment will allow you to turn your head from side to side and up and down to acquire new views and perspectives of a symphony orchestra and its instrumentalists. This itinerant project conceived and promoted by the "la Caixa" Foundation offers the opportunity to understand, through image and music, how, from the simplicity of a piece of wood or the roughness of a piece of metal, a universe as sophisticated and beautiful as that of a symphony orchestra is constructed.
In this way, Symphony deconstructs the orchestra to show simplicity, which contrasts with the infinite arc of resources it offers composers to express ideas and emotions. The experience offers the user an emotionally active listening: thanks to the changes of position within the orchestra, the spectator will hear and feel the music in a new and surprising way and will experience the different families of instruments. "With this unusual and captivating experience, we want to contribute to the dissemination of classical music through symphonic compositions and bring it to the general public, as well as to all music lovers who may be attracted by it. Orchestra and conductor join hands to propose a very special and unprecedented journey through the emotions and notes of great composers towards the heart of classical music and the human soul", emphasises the Deputy Director General of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Elisa Durán, in declarations included in the press release.
"It has been very exciting to participate in this project. Many different people and teams have worked to reach Symphony, an initiative of great fragility and delicacy", said Gustavo Dudamel in declarations included in the press release from the "la Caixa" Foundation. "Symphony is an invitation to cross the threshold of the world of music, a gateway to a universe without limits that contains the purest expression of the spirit of humanity", describes the creative director of the project, Igor Cortadellas.
This immersive experience lasts approximately forty minutes, divided into two parts. It begins with the projection of a panoramic film and continues with a jump to virtual reality that allows a 360 degree view of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, directed by Dudamel, and recorded in the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. The proposal takes place in two deployable units, each one measuring one hundred square metres: the first space is dedicated to the projection of a film on a large screen (12 minutes) and the second is for the virtual reality film (12 minutes). The first area will offer a sound and visual preamble to the virtual experience. This is a wordless film in which sound and music drive the story. Its purpose is to generate an opportunity to become aware of the soundscapes that surround us every day and everywhere.
Three young musicians from different parts of the world star in this initial screening, filmed in Colombia, New York and the Mediterranean coast. Through the portrait of the sounds and music of the places where they live, we will be able to understand how each one of them is connected with the sounds and music of their environment. Through this mosaic of contrasts, the viewer will discover how these random sounds, thanks to the ingenuity of human beings, become music, thus connecting different cultures. Once seen this first audiovisual, the spectators will access the musical experience of immersive reality through the virtual reality devices. After listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and seeing Gustavo Dudamel from the front row, the experience will move to another space: a lutier's workshop.
There, the audience will be able to hear the sound of the wood being carved by the hands of the string instrument maker, before getting inside the violin he works on and, later, inside a trumpet. Emphasizing the emotional power of the music, the audience will be accompanied by the melody of the beginning of Gustav Mahler's First Symphony, surrounded by an intimate and special environment, to end this journey now while performing the jovial Mambo from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.
More than 250 people involved in the project
The original idea for the project came about four years ago from the Department of Music of the "la Caixa" Foundation, which entrusted its artistic direction to the musician and creative artist Igor Cortadellas. He carried out the preparation of the script and a search for the appropriate technology. The musical direction fell to the orchestra conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who was responsible for validating and rounding off this ambitious project.
From then on, a competition was held to develop the technical part, which was won by the Barcelona-based post-production company and generator of visual effects and digital animation, Glassworks. One of the main challenges they faced was deciding where to place the 360-degree camera when recording. To find the most natural and realistic view for a spectator inside the orchestra, they created a 3D tool through a software to see beforehand where the camera could be positioned in the theatre, and to know what it would see.
The final filming took place at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu in August 2019 using a prototype Meta One camera created for the occasion, which allowed scenes to be recorded in low light and with a greater dynamic range than any other existing 360-degree camera, thanks to its lightness and smaller size compared to the rest. This allowed for a closer and more intimate recording of the orchestra. The sound recording for Symphony was made using the latest technology. Networked audio was used in order to keep cable lengths to a minimum. A single cable carried a total of 84 audio channels at 96 kHz and 24 bits. The microphone configuration itself used state-of-the-art 3D recording techniques.
All the instrumental groups were meticulously recorded with a mix of high quality digital and analogue microphones to recreate all the nuances of the orchestra and generate a 360º experience that accompanies the viewer's gaze. In total, more than 250 people have worked and collaborated to make this project a reality. Of these, a hundred people in the artistic field; from the lutier David Bagué, and under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, to the 60 extraordinary mentors of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and 41 young artists from the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation, representing citizens from 22 countries on 5 continents (from the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Norway, Venezuela, Colombia, Korea, Sweden, France and Argentina) give life to masterpieces of the classical repertoire, while expanding young people's access to music and the arts, offering them tools and opportunities to forge their creative futures
The visual concept of this virtual reality experience combines real image filmed in 360º (live action) with computer generated image (CGI) and visual effects made through VFX, which recreate dream universes that also find inspiration in nature to complete the beauty of the experience. The graphic sequences gain in complexity as the journey progresses and are the result of multiple layers and textures that overlap and adapt to changes in the score to make the journey more organic.
Audiences and additional measures in the face of the pandemic The Symphony project is an educational, cultural and recreational experience designed for all audiences from the age of 8 onwards, which does not include physical movement by the user, as its main objective is to encourage listening to music. Due to the VR technology itself and, by way of recommendation, there are some restrictions, such as for children under 8 and people with epilepsy or vertigo, among others.
The coronavirus pandemic fully affected the final part of the project's production and its preparation for the deployable units, forcing a delay in its release until September. The entity has taken all the relevant health measures to make this a safe experience. Cleaning has been reinforced and a photocatalytic (UV) disinfection system has been installed in the two units. This disinfectant action system is effective both in the ambient air and on all the surfaces of the treated spaces and frees them from contaminants and pathogens.
