Hybrid Venue: From Network Audio to Future Gigs

Hybrid Venue is an engagement project that builds on the research insights gained in the AHRC UK-US project, Hybrid Live. It is a collaboration between Goldsmiths and Iklectik Art Labs in London with CCRMA at Stanford University in California. The project will consolidate advanced network audio streaming technology, JackTrip developed at CCRMA with creative audiovisual interactions created at Goldsmiths to enable independent live music venues like Iklectik to expand their offer in a rapidly changing cultural sector.

Multiple factors, including new technologies, the COVID pandemic, and eco-crisis have had an indelible impact on the dynamics of live music and electronic audiovisual arts. COVID has made some audience agoraphobic whilst commercial streaming platforms offer an endless catalogue to 'Netflix 'n chill' at home. Touring artists are increasingly conscious of their carbon footprint and are more and more reluctant to fly to gigs. Meanwhile disruptive technologies like NFT have infiltrated the visual arts world with speculation. How do these factors combine to reshape the dynamics of live music and electronic visual arts?

Independent arts organizations need to continuously engage with, and expand their audiences. Whilst a physical venue enables local communities to come together, a network presence unlocks access to new audiences at a global scale. High quality streaming may alleviate air travel for international artists but also opens up new possibilities for multiple artists from different countries to perform together for an audience in a third location. The original Hybrid Live project carried out research configuring network audio and computer vision and graphics technologies to create new performance experiences for artist and audience alike. The new Hybrid Venue project will consolidate these advancements and explore a streaming, publication, and membership eco-system to create a prototype platform that can power the venue and label of the future.

The Hybrid Venue platform will consist of three key components. High quality, low latency network audio will allow immersive audio to be streamed to remote audiences, replicating the spatial sensation of a physical venue. Realtime computer vision, 3D graphics and audio reactive visuals will make interactive visuals that can be engaging as audio/visual art and also be informative in the way that album cover artwork and gig flyers once were in the print era and material epoque. A membership subscription offer exploring the use of blockchain technology will facilitate an economic model where audience buy tickets, artists are paid, and venues earn revenue on a secure, transparent distributed ledger. These three components come together to enable Iklectik to be the test case for a hybrid venue of the future: a local gig space, an international streaming channel, and a new kind of 'record label' publishing interactive a/v works.