Cinema for the Ears

Dr. Beck in front of the 27.2 channel iCAST Sound Diffusion System

In conjunction with the CCT Digital Media Center, the Experimental Music & Digital Media program presents a musical experience that you can find no where else. Feast your ears upon high definition sound projected over a palette of 92 speakers, which transports you to spaces unknown. Come experience this one-of-a-kind concert of sonic art featuring compositions of real and imagined soundscapes — from classic electroacoustic music to pieces composed specifically for the DMC Theatre.

Cinema for the Ears is an annual concert of electroacoustic music at LSU featuring the Digital Media Center’s 71 channel immersive audio system. Our 2017 event featured guest composer Paul Koonce.

The Cinema for the Ears concert is typically held in the remarkable 92 speaker Digital Media Center Theatre. The 2020 version has adapted to the pandemic experience, exploring new territory by bringing immersive experimental music fully online. Video, binaural audio, and live streaming will present sonic art work along with composer thoughts, program notes and live browser experiences to experience the music in your own abode.

This is the first in a series of Fall 2020 Concerts by EMDM to transform the way we can put on concerts over the internet. This first concert is laying the groundwork with delivering a live concert through the web by integrating high quality audio and video, live interactions, and curated live streaming. As the fall moves into the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana concert on Nov. 2nd @ 7:30 and Nov. 30 @ 7:30, the ensemble will present teleperformances in ways that have never been done before, from live streaming multi-performer ambisonic works to full on web browser performances that are tailored towards delivery, in real time, over the network. We invite you to join us Sept. 21 for the first steps in this wild journey.

Cinema for the Ears is a concert series of spatialized sonic art. The performance is achieved by diffusing sound recordings across a large array of loudspeakers, taking advantage of the room’s acoustics, size and shape of the loudspeakers, and directionality of the speakers. Through this process of diffusion, we are able to enhance recorded and live music and articulate its key elements much the way a pianist would interpret a piece of piano music.

c’est un cinéma pour l’oreille …
né des noces de la radio et de la musique
– François Bayle

To assist us in the process of diffusion, we have a permanently installed 90+ speaker immersive audio array in the Digital Media Center Theatre and have created a (portable!) 27-channel loudspeaker array known as the Immersive Computer-controlled Audio Sound Theatre or ICAST. This sound system enables musicians to diffuse sound across a large number of discreet speakers using intuitive controls and technologies. These systems use a client/server software created at LSU that links the mixing station and the audio servers with various traditional and experimental interface controls such as haptic interfaces (such as the Firefader), video tracking, Leap Motion, and mobile devices. 

Sound diffusion, spatialization and localization is an ongoing passion for the LSU EMDM program. We are interested not only in composing works for massively multichannel audio, but also developing control systems to map, project or otherwise manage performance across these systems.

Live mixing ICAST, Cinema for the Ears 2011

Live mixing ICAST, Cinema for the Ears 2011

ICAST speaker configuration, Cinema for the Ears 2013

 

Cinema for the Ears 2013