Pass shows in the Paris metro the creative possibilities of Soundscape

with D&b Soundscape, Platform Pass has developed a creative experience that travellers can listen to with headphones when passing through the Opera metro station in Paris.

In collaboration with the Paris Opera and the Parisian public transport company RATP, Platform Pass, a cultural organization based in Venice that unites art and technology, has created a sound representation of the city's famous lyric theatre. with D&b Soundscape has developed in his studio recordings with layers and spatial arrangements that have resulted in 'Les Secrets de l'Opéra', an experience that travelers can listen to with headphones when passing through the Ópera metro station.

The Pase team takes advantage of the synergies of collaboration with artists, Designers, technicians and researchers to reveal and develop experiences from new languages and creative technologies.

Among those experiences is d&b Soundscape, which is a fundamental element in your work study. for Victor Nebbiolo di Castri and Valeria Zane, co-founders and directors of Pase, being at the forefront of creative production is a social and artistic obligation.

"Recent developments in immersive hearing and spatial sound diffusion confirm that we must take these advances into account.. We want to support new projects that explore space and sound in an innovative way, for both creators and the public. We provide the technology that will take us into a new digital golden age.", says Zane.

This immersive audition projects is the audio project that can be heard with headphones in the Opera subway.

"I went to Paris to record behind-the-scenes sounds of the opera", explains Nebbiolo di Castri. "The idea was to create atmospheric recordings that would give people travelling on public transport an unexpected perspective on what opera is.. Naturally, people tend to associate this mostly with music, but there is much more like, For example, the creation of the actors' costumes, the construction of the sets or, even, the maintenance of that beautiful building. All those activities create sounds. And that's what we wanted to capture.".

Nebbiolo di Castri returned to Italy with many sound fragments recorded from all corners of the opera and, already in Pase Platform, started working to deploy them in the room. Recordings were played and re-recorded using a centrally located microphone, to create depth and movement for this fascinating journey with headphones.

"We created a double layer for the recording.. We use the Soundscape main ring and, below, We placed six speakers very close around the recording microphone to create depth. Record' on the ring’ it's almost like taking pictures for, after, layer one image over another to achieve the final result", comments Victor Nebbiolo di Castri.

In addition to using Soundscape for the arrangement of pre-recorded material, Pase also recorded live instruments and vocals in the studio., and relied on the spatial positioning of the system to recreate the desired dimension in the final sound result.

The experience 'Les Secrets de l'Opéra' will remain available at the Paris Opera metro station for the next ten years, and its end has been scheduled for the year 2030. Travelers can enter through their own headphones in the Pass recordings using a QR code.

Other articles on db audiotechnik, db Soundscape, Metro de París, Paris Opera, Platform Pass, RATP