It can now be revealed that sound positioning tool d&b Soundscape was employed in Paris to enable Nature Manifesto – an immersive sound installation by internationally renowned artist Björk, at the Pompidou Centre. The project fused art and ecological activism, with Björk’s distinctive voice reciting her manifesto of nature’s future, accompanied by the cries of endangered and extinct animals, plus spectacular visuals created partly using AI tools.
The presentation was created by Björk in collaboration with artist Aleph Molinari (event curator and the manifesto’s co-writer) and France’s IRCAM (the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) to draw attention to the ongoing collapse of Earth’s biodiversity. The three-minute-and-forty-second immersive sound piece ran exclusively at the Pompidou from 20 November to 9 December, free of charge.
In its aim to create an absorbing sound experience for audiences, the work drew heavily on the d&b Soundscape immersive audio system, with technical support provided by Southby Productions, the London-based specialist in d&b Soundscape technology.
Björk worked in collaboration with artist and composer Robin Meier Wiratunga to create the richly layered sound material, with its “orchestra” of animal voices. One of the biggest challenges facing the Southby sound team of Digby Shaw and Joel Gosling was to make the immersive listening experience as inclusive as possible, not just for a static audience across the Pompidou Centre’s interior levels, but for those on the move, travelling within the building’s iconic exterior ‘caterpillar’ escalator tube.
A single DS100 signal engine provided the processing required for the d&b Soundscape system, playing through 70 point source loudspeakers from d&b’s compact E-Series. A ring of six E8 cabinets, plus an ultra compact B8 subwoofer, served each level of the Pompidou Centre, while each corresponding section of escalator was covered by eight E5s. The entire system was powered via 20 5D amplifiers.
With so many creative and technology stakeholders, there were a number of ideas and tools involved, including IRCAM’s SPAT software – a real-time spatial audio processor.
Meier Wiratunga explained: “Once we had made significant progress on the composition, the question became how to present it in such a unique space as the caterpillar. Spatialisation quickly became the central focus of this creation and mixing process.”
Shaw added: “d&b Soundscape is perfect to collate all these different trajectories, even different technologies – such as SPAT – and transpose it from the studio environment and into the Pompidou. It exists to create unique listening environments for the audience – even if they are moving through six storeys in Paris.”
Chloé Siganos, curator, Pompidou Centre, concluded: “Technology today isn’t just a tool; it serves creativity, and I find it amazing when art and technology come together in service of the narrative. This is where the future of live performance lies.”
