An immersive experience

The Indian Sonic Research Organisation (TheISRO) held the public premiere of ‘Zoophony VR’ – an immersive media experience month. The event took place at the Goethe-Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore. Zoophony VR is work for spatial audio and virtual reality, which was developed as a collaboration between Berlin-based composer, Sergey Khismatov and Bangalore-based visual-artist, Chaitanya Krishnan. The work is the result of an obsessive, decade-long project by Khismatov to collect animal sounds and use them in a symphony.

The collaboration took place as part of Soundchains - Virtual Artistic Exchange 2021 program hosted at ISRO and supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore. The virtual artist exchange is a response to the pandemic. With the shutting down of the international physical residency at the Indian Sonic Research Organisation, production and collaboration has now moved into new uncharted digital formats.

Over the course of the Soundchains, Chaitanya worked with Sergey Khismatov to interpret the Zoophony score and transform it into a claustrophobic, ghostly and sometimes magical atmosphere. For both these artists, the work deals with environmental concerns. A concern which informs both their practices as artists. Chaitanya Krishnan was assisted by the graduate trans-disciplinary research students at the (ART)ScienceBLR. The work was also supported by the STORYLAB at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.

In addition to the physical event, Zoophony VR was also premiered online on the 19th of December at 5pm IST. The experience can be viewed on the Zoophony VR.

website: https://zoophony.theisro.org