Projects
Thenix Sound Foundation
Thenix Sound Foundation
An exploration of the sound worlds suggested by the fiction and imagination of JG Ballard.
Ballard's extraordinary and vivid world is packed with opportunities to fire our sonic imagination. We will use ambisonic sound and phenomenally deep bass to sculpt a variety of emotional and physical states: from the violent terror of being on board a light aircraft that is crashing into the Thames, to the feeling ecstatic freedom of being a whale swinming up that same river; from the sensation of being ensnared in a dense tropical jungle that has seemingly appeared from nowhere to engulf a suburban riverside town, to flying high above that town like an enormous Condor catching thermals.
Explore
£5,000
Aims of the Project
We will take JG Ballard’s visionary novel THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY as the starting point for an experiment in how immersive sound technology can drive the narrative of live theatre.
Our collective experience is that “sound” – be that music, sound effects, or the fascinating area where the two meet – is often considered too late in the day when it comes to dramatic performance. Our aim is to reverse that approach and explore the sound of the piece first, working with composer and sound artists first before anything else comes into play.
We will use our EXPLORE funding to test the limits of what immersive sound technology can achieve – how it can create whole worlds through precise and detailed audio positioning, but also how low frequency sound can create euphoric or disturbing effects by working on the whole body, not just the ears.
Meet the artists
Nick Sweeting
Lead artist
he/him
A new collective creating live dramatic work that imagines sound first.
Highly experienced producer, writer, director and composer come together for the first time to explore the narrative possibilities of encircling an audience inside a dub sound system and creating a whole world through ambience, ambisonics and extreme sound pressure.
Nick Sweeting is an independent producer with 35 years of experience. He has worked with a wide range of creative collectives over that time including Improbable, 59 Productions, dreamthinkspeak, Javaad Alipoor and Limbic Cinema.
Nick Vivian
Nick Vivian is an Oscar and BAFTA nominated scriptwriter. His collaborations on live works include co-creating the immersive COTTON PANIC! ‘gig theatre’ piece for Manchester International Festival 2017 as part of a team that included Industrial music pioneer Stephen Mallinder (ex-Cabaret Voltaire) and actor Jane Horrocks.
