City Immersive Sound and Movement Environment (CISME)

This project will lead to the construction of an innovative, modular performance system - City Immersive Sound and Movement Environment - which will allow us to undertake research in audio-visual performance involving ambisonic sound, extended reality, and immersive projection. The use of digital techniques such as avatars, movement tracking and various forms of extended/virtual reality are becoming increasingly widespread in theatre and dance performance. In this system these will become allied to, and extend, our existing research strengths in sound practice and the manipulation of sound within different spaces.

The system will be portable, so that it can be deployed not only in City's internal spaces, but also externally, where it will underpin performance events in a variety of different venues. While previous research has made advances separately in the fields of 3D imaging and movement or immersive sound, the core motivation of CISME to explore the synergies of 3D movement, image, and audio is a novel goal, and one for which City and Urdang are uniquely qualified.

In addition to the cutting-edge research that the system will allow, we shall also use it as part of the training and development of our students in music, dance and musical theatre, so that they can gain experience of working with some of the latest digital techniques that they will increasingly find to be part of the professional environments to which they aspire in their future careers.