POLYGON PRODUCTIONS
You have installed the system at Thailand ’ s Wonderfruit festival for years , what is your plan to roll it our further ? That ' s what we ' re focused on all the time currently ; to get it into as many locations as possible , ideally outdoor venues because that ' s where it really comes to life . We are speaking to a lot of festivals around the world to deploy it and we ' re doing our own event in Crystal Palace in May .
Tell me more about the Crystal Palace shows . They will be in Crystal Palace Park , South London , on the Italian terraces . It ’ s a lovely spot on the top of Crystal Palace Park , a great big flat piece of land with a backdrop of Roman-style ruins . We will have a 5,000-capacity set up in a tent and run shows for three nights from 2-4 May . There will be a variety of genres ; one day will be more dance focused , another more pop , and for the other we are exploring dub and reggae .
So , the plan is to move beyond dance music and use the 360 audio system for live band performances ? We ' ve done a lot of electronic music , that obviously lends itself to spatial audio because you don ' t necessarily have a band in front of you and so it ’ s easy to position things in the round and move them . I think to have a band in front of you and have the audio suddenly moving
“ WE ' VE DEVELOPED NEW DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS THAT ARE MORE ACHIEVABLE AND COST EFFECTIVE FOR FESTIVALS .”
around you , that ' s really when this starts challenging people , gets really exciting , interesting and different .
How else are you working to enhance the immersive experience ? We ' ve been working on scent dispersion with a fluid mechanics engineer to build a piping structure that fits around the dome , so we can pump scents through . It ' s quite complicated , with outdoor locations particularly as the wind is a factor but we ' re making good progress , and I think the scent aspect is really powerful . Haptics is also something we ' re excited about . We ' re testing haptic jackets out and other haptic wearables that could be introduced . We ' re also exploring how we can integrate eating or drinking into the experience ; so you can have food that ' s paired with audio .
Are you looking at working with agencies on brand launches and b2b events ? Absolutely . It can enhance a brand launch , a corporate or a b2b event ; there ' s so many different formats we can create to suit those different environments and opportunities .
At a time when many festivals have been struggling financially , do you expect many operators to invest in spatial audio ? Putting all this together is costly and so injecting it into existing festivals is challenging for obvious reasons . It ’ s a tough sell , but with the challenging
Nico Elliot
environment in the ticket selling market it feels like festivals are required to differentiate themselves more and have something different to attract additional ticket buyers . So now feels like a good moment to expand and we ' re getting a lot of interest . We ' ve developed new deployment options that are more achievable and cost effective for festivals . We recently did a scaled back set up in Singapore for Formula One , we were on top of Marina Bay Sands , and there were numerous constraints and challenges involved in the project that forced us to be creative , and the result was a smaller system that sounded amazing .
To appreciate the impact of 360-degree spatial audio you really have to experience it first-hand , has that made it more challenging to sell ? When we do it in London , hopefully people will come , experience it and get excited about it . I ' m confident that we ' ll get there because it ’ s such an exciting listening experience . One of our greatest challenges has been trying to sell this by talking about it . People have heard Dolby Atmos , they ' ve heard binaural sound , but when you ' ve got an L-ISA sound installation with a lot of big speakers in a setting outside , it ’ s really something new , and a very powerful experience .
accessaa . co . uk 41