SAT (Society for Arts and Technology) is a pioneering institution to bring together an immersive theater, a research laboratory, a training center, a venue, a café and a restaurant under the same roof. Its Satosphere is the first immersive theater dedicated to artistic creation in the world, and houses a variety of projects from audiovisual performances, to film screenings, architectural visualization, dance, and game projects.
Boasting a capacity of 350 people, the Satosphere is 18 meters in diameter and 13 meters in height and equipped with 8 video projectors. It features a modular screen configuration that can be set to 180° or 210° vertical by 360°, 93 full-range speakers as well as 5 channels for low-frequency transmitter for a fully immersive audiovisual environment.
Music in the Shape of a Sphere: Matthew D. Gantt
In July 2024, American composer Matthew D. Gantt performed his latest project ‘Music in the Shape of a Sphere’ at SAT Montreal. The performance uses real-time simulation as a compositional environment where sound objects interact and generate emergent sonic sequences.
“As I’ve begun creating virtual environments in game engines and similar in the time since, I’ve been trying to carry that line of thinking with me, where these 3D spaces and objects can operate somewhere between a virtual architectural space, a collection of ‘digital sound sculptures’ or as a set of kinetic ‘sound objects’ unto themselves.”
Unreal Engine Scene Construction, Live Input, and 360 Capture
Gantt created a level combining interactive sound objects, virtual soundscapes and spatialized sounds in Unreal Engine.
To capture the scene for a planetarium setting, Gantt used the OWL 360 camera with DomeMaster projection, mapped across eight projectors in the dome.
During the performance, VR headset and sound object transformations within Unreal Engine served as live event data. This set up dynamically controlled the positioning of audio sources within the soundfield, utilizing an ambisonic panner.
Audio and control signals from Unreal Engine (OSC) were handled on a third laptop, while audio spatialization was processed on a dedicated machine, which managed OSC signals Unreal Engine, MIDI mapping, and audio sources via Dante from the performance laptop, ensuring precise synchronization and immersive sound.
To manage computational load, Gannt divided tasks across four machines. He used the OWL Spout Sender to output the 360 render target to TouchDesigner, where additional processing was handled. From there, the signal was transmitted via NDI to a second PC that managed the stitching and mapping for the 8 dome projectors.
Performance Images
